Final Presentation Handout

ES 4: Chicano Culture
Final Presentation Handout

For your final presentation, you will prepare an outline describing your culture (yes, your personal culture) and how race/ethnicity, class, and gender have influenced your own cultural production. You must first give a definition of culture and then provide some personal examples. (Do not include anything that you don’t want others to know).

Your outline should look like this:

1. Culture is:

2. My Culture is:

3. How race/ethnicity, class, and gender have influenced my culture?

A. Race/Ethnicity:

B. Class:

C. Gender:

4. Finish the following statement, “we are conditioned but not determined, that’s why my culture…”

One way to think about this assignment, is by paying attention to the three main components of culture: values/beliefs, norms and traditions, and objects. So, what do you believe and what does your background and social reality have to do with it? What are your norms and traditions, and what do they have to do with your background and social reality? What objects you use and what do they have to do with your background and social reality? Culture is also about what you do and what you like.

For question number four, think about how you have created your own culture. If you have brothers and sisters you might have different beliefs and values, different taste in music, different views about gender roles, etc. Meaning that just because you are from a certain ethnic group, it does not mean that this determines what your culture will be, although it does have a big influence. It also means that you can challenge ‘norms,’ such as dominant culture’s expectations on what women should or should not do, or how people should or should not dress, etc.