Group Presentation
This final presentation forms the wrap-up for this Unit and allows you to demonstrate your understanding of the material we have covered in week 6. The basis for the presentation is a fictitious nation. You are asked to create an imaginary country and to combine theoretical concepts with real current and historical scenarios to make your case.

Due Dates
On Monday, February 21

• As a group, you will have created a fictitious country (the more details that you have at this point, the better)
• As a group, you will be presenting the details of the history, geography, and culture of your country, including your manipulated map. (approximately 5 minutes)
• As a group, you will have selected a Scenario for your group to work on and divided your group into two halves (each half working independently on a solution to the chosen scenario

On Thursday,

• As a group, you will be giving a public presentation of two approaches to the same scenario. Each half of your group will be presenting their solution to the scenario (approximately 7-10 minutes)
• As a group, you will be handing in a 5-page analysis of the country, the scenario, and the two alternative solutions

NCC Competencies
Communication, aesthetic response, global understanding and critical thinking and analysis

• Describe the major ideologies of the imagined communities. For example:
  • Majority/minority religious practices and how they emerged
  • Political perspectives and how they are affected by ethnicities and religious practices
  • Formation of the country (i.e., through conflict or assimilation?)
  • Major industries, crops and exports, imports
  • Education policies
  • Policies on immigration
• Justify the choices you make based on real factors of geography, political climate of bordering countries, and economy. The country is fictitious, but the presentation must have an internal logic to seem "real."
• Select and manipulate images that explain, support and amplify the position.

Visual Component:

• Collaborate with group members. You will work in groups in the Enterprise Computer Lab and/or from your own computers collaborating via email or the unit message boards or Blogs.
• Retrieve a real map. You may use a map from the University of Texas at Austin Library web site (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps), but you must be sure that the map is in the public domain and not copyrighted. Before you begin working with the map, you should go to the Map FAQ page, which explains how to determine which maps are copyrighted or are public domain. The Map FAQ page also explains ways to view and retrieve the JPEG image of your map in PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements.
• Manipulate the map image. You will work with the map image in PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements to crop the areas of the map you wish to discuss, to label the areas with text overlays, and to create the borders of your own imagined country.
• Create a PowerPoint presentation or web site. Incorporate your images of the maps into a PowerPoint slide presentation or web site to help explain, support, and amplify your oral presentation. You will submit your url or your presentation on a zip disk or CD-R following the presentation. For expert help in developing the slide presentation, go to Creating a Great Presentation.
• Cite resources. Be sure to cite the University of Texas at Austin web site on each page of the PowerPoint presentation where your map is used. Also cite the Map FAQ page at the end of the presentation

The Nation
The nation came into its present existence following World War II and is now threatening to fall apart as different groups (religious, ethnic, linguistic, geographically based, etc.) try to decide whether they are better served by remaining as part of the original country or by splitting off into independent countries.

One part of the country has attracted migrants; another is monocultural; another part feels more affinity with a neighboring nation. Industry and agriculture exist in different segments of this country. Depending on where your country is located, there also may be problems with droughts, flooding, or earthquakes.

Some of the positions of the different groups include:

• The majority ethnic and cultural population also holds the majority of positions in government and industry.
• A religious minority group shares ethnicity with the majority population.
• An ethnic and religious minority group feels as much camaraderie with the nation as with the neighboring nation with which they share culture.
• Various ethnic and cultural minorities live in one section of the nation as a result of immigration.
  

Components
Your final assignment is a group project presented in seminar to your peers and a panel of faculty. Detailed instructions for each of the elements are provided below, but here is an overview of your process for the assignment:

• Attend a PhotoShop Elements Workshop with your seminar and posting your workshop images onto your web site
• Use PhotoShop Elements to carve out and label an "imagined nation" from an existing online map
• Develop the assigned scenario about your imagined nation
• Create a website or PowerPoint presentation that can be posted on your website or handed in on zip disk or CD-R
• Present the scenario to an audience of your peers and visiting faculty

Evaluation
Instructors will assess the project using the following criteria:

• Does the presentation have an internal logic that makes the presentation believable?
• Does the group have a clear understanding of the ways in which ideologies shape political and economic practices as demonstrated through a coherent and logical argument?
• Did the group follow the instructions for an effective presentation?
• Do the images explain, support and amplify the group's position?

Guidelines for Oral Presentations
Each group will present in seminar at the beginning of week 5. Each group will have 5 minutes to present the history, geography, and culture of the country.

Each group will present in seminar on the afternoon of the last day of class. Each group will have 20 minutes to present, so each half of the group should be prepared to discuss their scenario for 10 minutes. In addition, the group will have a few minutes for set-up and for Q&A.

Project should focus on weeks 5 and 6, but should also include material and concepts from previous weeks. Students must illustrate a clear sense of the theoretical works from weeks 5 and 6 and must cite at least three of the following key texts from weeks 5 and 6:

• Anderson lecture
• Hobsawn
• Ghandi
• Hoogvelt
• Darwish
• Walzer
• Keanne

In addition, at least one text from each of weeks one through four should be cited. (Note it says "at least"; more are encouraged.)

The project must refer to at least two real-world conflicts, nations or countries we have discussed in class throughout the unit to illustrate your points and make your cases. These include China, India, Liberia, Rwanda, Jamaica, Bosnia, and Chile.

The project must demonstrate mastery of at least two key concepts or terms such as ideology, nation, community, empire, migration, genocide, gender, etc.

Students must be sure to articulate their own identities and community biases as they take a position in this project.

Scenarios

National Charter
Using concepts of nationalism, students will create the charter for an ideal community - a utopia - to form a "perfect" nation. Students will discuss both the positives and negatives of defining a national community. This includes what will hold the community together (economics, common religion, etc.), as well as issues that might threaten the solidarity of the community - immigration, for example.

Audience: You are the majority party, and are trying to convince minority parties to agree to the charter.

Mapmaking & Naming Project
Your company has been hired by the government to publish an Official National Map. The team chosen for this task is multicultural and multiracial, and includes employees who do not agree on the names of places, or even where the true borders of the countries should be, as some areas are being disputed by neighboring states.

Discuss cultural meanings of borders. Is it necessary for a nation/community to be geographically unified? Why is it so important to mark and defend borders? Also address questions of mass culture and the blurring of international borders.

Audience: You are the president of the company, making the case to the executive branch of government that yours should be the official state map.

Immigration Policy Paper Project
You work for a non-profit organization in the United States. You are writing a report explaining why immigrants from one minority community in the fictional country should be immediately allowed into the united states as refugees, while another group should have more restricted entry as immigrants.

You must think about the distinctions between migrants and refugees - whether economic, political or social reasons for leaving one's country are more or less pressing than one another. An interesting case study to consider would be the media treatment of Cubans and of Haitians attempting to come into the U.S.

Audience: You are a non-profit organization writing a report for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

United Nations Peacekeeping Mission
Different religious and ethnic groups in the nation are in conflict, moving the nation toward civil war. The UN has decided to send a peacekeeping force to this fictional country torn apart by internecine conflict. The peace-keeping force has several tasks: to develop and maintain a process of conciliation, to protect displaced and threatened refugees, to maintain the neutrality of the UN force, and to remain in the country for a limited time.

Audience: You are part of a human rights organization assigned to develop a briefing for the peace-keeping force on the issues they will face in this country, and outline a series of policies which will allow the force to achieve its aims.

Mural
You are charged with designing a mural representing your nation's histories and cultures for the lobby of the national legislature building. Address such questions as:

• How do you - or do you - recognize a time when one culture in your country committed genocide against another? ·
• Recognize women and other populations as important when they are largely absent from written histories?
• Address a subculture that the majority culture feels is dividing the nation and contributing to conflict?

Audience: You are a group of artists seeking a grant for this project from a large multinational corporation based in our fictional nation.

Political Campaign
You are working on the national leadership campaign of a non-incumbent candidate. This candidate identifies herself or himself as a member of more than one cultural and ethnic group in the country, one in the majority and one in the minority, and claims to support other minority groups as well.

Devise a campaign strategy that will seek the votes of minority and subcultures without alienating the majority culture who have more influence on the candidate's victory. To do this, you must also address conflicts among these different groups.

Audience: You are a public relations company trying to convince the candidate she or he should follow your campaign strategy.

Public Relations Campaign
You are working for a public relations company that is representing a major American transnational corporation. The corporation has many contracts with the majority government-including military contracts-and owns several plantations and mineral refineries and operates factories throughout the country. However, most of its production operates with the help of minority ethnic groups in areas of the country that are now in danger of seceding.

To make this more complicated, the military contracts from the corporation have often assisted the majority government in suppressing uprisings in these minority-dominated areas. If these minority-dominated areas secede, the corporation stands to lose a great deal of its assets and productive capacity unless it can convince the new leadership it should be allowed to stay.

Audience: You are the Executive Vice President of the public relations firm hired by a major corporation to help the company figure out how to convince the minority- dominated areas that they can benefit by not seceding and by participating in the corporation's various industries.