SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION ESSAY
ESSAY OBJECTIVES
We often understand our lives as personal and private. When something good or bad happens, we have a tendency to credit or blame ourselves alone. Sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959) challenges us to understand how our private experiences are linked to broader, public issues-the seemingly private can be understood more fully when seen in a public context.
This assignment allows you to use your sociological imagination to reflect on your own biography. Your goal is to take something from your own experience and demonstrate how it could be understood as a product of social and historical forces.
Pick an issue, incident, decision or circumstance in your life (such as your decision to attend university, or whom you are friendly with, or your leisure interests, or your self-presentation, or a move to a new country), and use Mills' conceptions of personal troubles and public issues to explain your biographical detail sociologically.
MOTIVATING QUESTIONS
• What is the relationship between private troubles and public issues? Between biography and history? Between the individual and society?
• What experience in your life can be better understood by tracing its roots as a public issue? Why did you pick this experience for this paper?
• How is this experience shaped by social and historical context? What sociological concepts or processes help make these connections visible?
• Why does Mills write that the sociological imagination is both "terrible" and "magnificent"?
ESSAY OUTLINE - WHAT TO INCLUDE (OCT 30)
• A unique paper title (it can change later)
• Your name, student number, the date, the course, the instructor, and your discussion section
• Name the personal experience you would like to analyze
• Identify potential social and historical forces that have shaped this experience
• Note the key ideas from Mills (1959) The Sociological Imagination that you will draw upon
• List and describe the academic sources you will use to develop and support your arguments (In addition to Mills' work, incorporate one or more course readings and one or more external academic sources, such as a peer-reviewed journal article or data from Statistics Canada).
FORMATTING: 1-2 pages with size 12 Times New Roman font and 1 inch margins. Bullet-points acceptable.
FINAL ESSAY - WHAT TO INCLUDE (NOV 15)
• A cover page with unique paper title, your name, student number, the date, the course, the instructor, and your discussion section
• In-text citations in APA format for all statistics, quotes and ideas from others
• A bibliography in APA format
• In addition to Mills' work, incorporate one or more course readings and one or more external academic sources (e.g., peer-reviewed journal article, data from Statistics Canada)
FORMATTING: 5-6 pages double spaced with size 12 Times New Roman font. Pages numbered and stapled, with 1 inch margins.