The purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to apply the sociological imagination to your everyday life: To make connections between your everyday life and the life of a historical or current social leader whose life and actions has had a broad impact on the sociocultural structures within which you live. In this assignment, you will reference appropriate Course Objectives (COs) that relate to your Socioautobiography. You can find the COs in this course listed in the Syllabus
and in the weekly objectives. This assignment can be related to any and all of the COs.

The Socioautobiography is a reflective paper that allows you the opportunity to explore the
interconnections between biography (a slice of someone’s life), the social structure, and culture. In
preparation for this paper, please read this document, Socioautobiography Assignment Guideline. At the end of the paragraph where a concept is used, indicate which COs your sociological concept refers. This should be done using parenthetical citation. An example of how to do this is provided below. The final paper will be due at the end of Week 5. It should be three-to-four pages in length and in standard APA style. Be sure to double-space your paper, and correctly use a minimum of six sociological concepts covered in the weekly readings or lecture. Your six concepts should be in boldface and underlined.

Consider the following example:
“As I think about my experience growing up, I realized that I was at a disadvantage compared with some of the other students. I came from a Black lower middle-class family. In my family gender did
matter, boys and girls were raised with different expectations. Going to college was not going to be easy right after high school. Martin Luther King Jr had made great strides toward equal opportunity in education for minorities, but most people who went to college were White middle or upper-class high school graduates. I was fortunate I even graduated from high school. My mother never got past 6th grade as education was not a priority for women then. (CO 3 and CO 6).
• Note how, in this mini- Socioautobiography, there are references to social class and gender.”
Below are guidelines to follow as you work on your Co-Biography assignment.

Papers should contain 3-to 4-pages of text, double-spaced (this does not include the title page).
Refer to and properly use at least 6 sociological concepts covered in Lessons/textbook reading.
Underline and boldface these concepts.

Connect concepts to COs. Indicates COs covered in parentheses, as per assignment instructions.
Cite the textbook and/or Lesson for the concepts and the Syllabus or course objectives for the COs
in addition to any outside source material used both in body and on your reference page.

CO-BIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES GRADING RUBRIC
Component Submission Points
Refers to at least six sociological concepts covered in the Lessons or textbook reading
and uses them correctly. 60
Submission underlines each concept and puts them in boldface and relates them to the
appropriate CO. 20
Submission meets minimum length requirement of three-to-four pages of text not
including title page or reference page. 10
Submission is well-written and well-organized and free from mechanical errors (errors
in spelling, punctuation, word choice, and grammar).
5
Submission properly referenced course Lesson and/or textbook for the sociological
concepts and the Syllabus and/or course objectives for the COs in the body of the
paper and on a reference page.
5
Total 100
You might find the following helpful as you are thinking about what a Socioautobiography is.
The purpose of the Socioautobiography is to use the insights from sociology to better understand how
your own story is shaped by someone else’s contribution. The Socioautobiography is rather a reflective
exercise in which you step outside of yourself and employ sociological concepts to interpret how your
experiences were the result of a culture or how your life fits in a social context and the result of
generations of people who created the conditions for you to flourish. According to sociologist C. Wright
Mills personal troubles generally find their source in larger social forces such as those related to public
issues. (p. 287) The Socioautobiography leads you to a path of self-discovery where you may consider
how social influences or historical social leaders have shaped the person you are today. As you examine
your Socioautobiography, you ponder on that individual that helped shape the social forces that
constructed your identity today? How did you reconcile the pressures to surrender autonomy and
conform to the norm? Was that historical leader an inspiration or a source of strength that allowed you
to focus on your priority? The connection between the micro and macro realms is an important area to
address in your Socioautobiography.
Socioautobiography also gives you the opportunity to place your life under the sociological microscope
and apply the skills of sociological analysis. Try to understand who you are in your social context using a
sociological perspective AND historical social leader. As you write your story, use sociological concepts—
such as social class, reference group, conformity, norm, role, deviance, subculture, and any others that
are helpful—to interpret your life experiences. You may want to focus on how that particular historical
individual you selected influenced several events, special moments, or important relationships in your
life in significant ways. Recall key themes, events, or circumstances that have contributed to the
construction of your identity. You may want to discuss the importance of this historical social leader
influenced others, your family structure, residence (urban, suburban, rural), ethnicity, religion, social
status, group memberships, economic status, leisure, work, death, and crisis. Regardless of which
person you discuss, be sure to interpret him/her with some of the sociological concepts that have been
introduced throughout the book.
Questions like the following may be appropriate:
How have social historical leaders molded my behavior and world view?
In what sense am I both a product and producer of culture?
How has my family background expanded or restricted my opportunities and life chances?
How might I be different had I been born into another culture or if this individual I chose has not
been born?
What have been the most influential act this individual was responsible for that impacted my
life?
In crafting a Socioautobiography, we have the opportunity to reflect on the construction of our selfidentity. Only as we begin to understand how we have been socially created can we become fully
empowered to act. Many of us go through life repeating patterns given to us by the faces in our mirror without realizing that we have the power to change those patterns in our own lives. As we begin to understand how we have been created, we have greater freedom to control how we shape and produce the culture around us. (pp. 288-289)