User:SBaylor/sandbox

Drama Article Evaluation

 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

A lot of the language used about the novel's themes and backlash include talk about the author doing these things intentionally. It should be reiterated under a Genre section that this book is fiction, yes, but based on much of the author's experiences and real-life relationships. For example, the section on "Hegemonic Masculinity" is deserved of existing since it is a major theme. But the scientific term "Hegemonic Masculinity" and the language used makes it seem like the author wrote exactly how she wrote it so to be interpreted this way, and that the plot and characters were carefully crafted rather than organically real.


 * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

In the controversy section, I feel like there should be at least a few sections added about the stereotypes of girls and LGBTQ people, and her techniques of depicting racial diversity. Also, there should be a Genre section that discusses this relationship between fiction/non-fiction in this novel. Additionally, there should be a little interpretation and analysis of the visual style, perhaps the misleading nature of the cover, the stereotypical uses of box size and juxtaposition.


 * What else could be improved?

The lead section is a bit misleading (pun intended). Grammar problems aside, the first few sentences need to reference the LGBTQ nature of the novel's plot. Towards the end of the lead, I think it would also be important to reference some of the stereotypes and criticisms the novel has come under (female and LGBTQ stereotypes, racial diversity, etc.). Also, the summary should have more details both the immediate aftermath of Jesse and West's kiss. This would include the resounding applause Jesse received, how he was mobbed by fans for autographs, and how Callie defends Jesse when Matt makes some homophobic comments. Generally, this has a lot of organizational issues.

Ethnic Studies Evaluation
- Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

The article gives a pretty comprehensive understanding of "Ethnic Studies" from a scholarly and informative perspective. It gives historical background to how and why it came about through the Civil Rights movement. Additionally, it gives lists of current undergraduate and graduate programs in Ethnic Studies, and examples of controversy relating to ethnic studies. Additionally, it has a whole separate section about the Arizona controversy which is very necessary. The article also shares information about the common political opposition facing ethnic studies programs which is also pretty comprehensive, but not as detailed as I would hope.

- Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

I would include a paragraph about how some of he opposition is related to society's fear of radicalizing minorities and the misperception of damaging patriotism. I would also briefly mention the link to today's trend of "colorblindness," that there is sometimes a fear that acknowledging race means being racist (cite Abate). After reading through the section on the Arizona ban, the article presents a timeline of the appeal to the district court. It stops when August 2017 the ban was struck down as unconstitutional, but this leaves an incomplete ending. More research and explanation should be done regarding the current status of the MAS program at TUSD.

- What else could be improved?

I would add something about the benefits and the advantages that schools and universities see in providing an ethnic studies program. I would cite Rethinking Columbus, the Cabrera et al article, and Acosta's article. Overall, there are just gaps where some more information or elaboration would be helpful. Whether it's analysis or examples in current events, places like this sentence: "Even more recently, ethnic studies has grown philosophically and politically closer to LGTBQ studies." should have more detail. While the article does a good job of mentioning and sharing the information for California school districts, I am intrigued to see if there is more controversy around it similar to Arizona. I'm skeptical to think that Arizona is the only state where there has been such controversy. I would be interested to look at other Southwestern states, possibly African American studies programs in the South, and Native American/Asian American studies programs in the pacific northwest. The entire section about CESA seems very loaded as far as tone, and would need major revisions for its objectivity. There should be more citations about this organization to give different views, but if more sources cannot be found, it would probably be reasonable to delete the section since it is not very notable.

Contemporary Native American Issues in the United States (Trauma Section) Evaluation
- Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

There are a few sentences that trail off about DDT and what it is... This is pretty irrelevant since its use is only mentioned once in the article.

- Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

The trauma section has a pretty good start to the causes and solutions, but these could use a good deal of work. For example, I know through my Problem of God class and watching the documentary "Dakota 38" that some of the solutions present for this intergenerational historical trauma are sharing community experiences, forgiveness of past events, and support networks in communities are great resources. Also, as stated by Rethinking Columbus and the multiple readings I have done in my Problem of God class, Native Americans face mental illnesses as serious as PTSD related to this intergenerational trauma. The Wiki article contains no reference to this. Also, the Historical Trauma section lacks a real explanation for how it works. It is difficult to nail down, but I'm sure there are resources (possibly even some I've read) that do a good enough job to paraphrase or quote there. The "impacts of intergenerational trauma" section lacks a necessary link to cultural potency and religious expression. There could be something to be said about how people suffering from this intergenerational trauma also resort to suicide or live off the reservation to leave that part of themselves behind (research necessary).

- What else could be improved?

The solutions part of this section sounds like it was written by either a scholar in Indigenous "something" or is a Native American because they talk about how ~all~ Native Americans view the mind, body, and soul. While their statements may be correct, 1) their tone does not feel immediately objective, and 2) this could use more concrete evidence like a quote or a few more different resources to verify since I'm not sure this is a common fact. And this is a fairly major edit, but possibly there could be a part about Indigenous religion. In fact, the entire article totally disregards this major issue! I would even consider making this my final project because I have the resources from both POG and this Writing class, and this is a major flaw of the article. Also, where the historical trauma section covers the issues of land and treaty violations it leaves out a few key points I feel should be included. One issue is that treaty violations are, of course, disrespectful of Native Rights to the land they have always lived on. Also, another issue is that bordered lands often leave out significant monuments/shrines/land characteristics that have a historical or religious significance to the tribe. The boarding school section could include so much more detail about methods and effects, and could provide pictures and quotes about the experiences shared.

A Wrinkle in Time (2018 Film) Evaluation of Structure
Lead Section: There are a lot of unnecessary details about the production of the film and related dates in the lead that unnecessarily cloud the important information. The dates and rambling sentences distract the reader form knowing that it was the first big box film to be directed by a woman of color. Even the detail following that is unnecessary for the lead section, and should be included in production or reception.

Plot: Glancing over it, there are a lot of unnecessary details. Total, you could probably cut about two or three paragraphs.

Cast: It includes a few characters that i would not bother mentioning like some of Meg's teachers and the minor conflicting characters in the other worlds. Generally, the character probably shouldn't be mentioned unless it is a main pillar of the plot or it is played by a notable actor.

Production: It mentions a lot of good material like dates and budget statistics, but it greatly rehashes the cast list in sentence format. It does not seem particularly vital for readers to know the exact order the cast signed on to the film (except for perhaps Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey). In the filming section, it gives great detail about the varied locations, but small details were particularly irrelevant, like DuVernay's instagram post about New Zealand.

Music: This deviation from Wikipedia's structure has a separate section on Music which seems highly unnecessary. It should be put as a subsection on the production, but since it does not seem very notable, then only one sentence can be included to link it to the separate article listing the soundtrack.

Release: It is very sparsely detailed, and I expected it to include the various dates that the lead section had.

Reception: This is pretty well detailed, and I wouldn't change much. It probably includes a few opinions of blogs that don't seem too important, but it is generally pretty good. Also, there really needs to be a subsection addressing discrepancies between the film and the book. I noticed a great deal of discrepancies, and I am sure there are articles and public outrage relating to them. This section could address them and perhaps explain why they are there by including quotes form DuVernay and the screenwriters. Below is a source that I would use that relates to how the target audience is different today, and there are different challenges and degrees of diversity available to today. It could be said with the article (or at least extrapolated) that these differences were necessary to make the film relevant and keep pushing today's socially progressive views of diversity, inclusion and representation.

"'A Wrinkle In Time' Will Delight Target Audience That Doesn't Have Too Many Wrinkles." All Things Considered, 8 Mar. 2018. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530668547/LitRC?u=wash43584&sid=LitRC&xid=d7acbd97. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018.

Infobox: Under the "See Also" section, I would include more links to other pages like "Film Adaptations of Popular Books" or "Madaleine L'Engle," and "A Wrinkle in Time (1962 book).

Evaluating Persepolis Article
Background: Immediately, I'm not sure that this section should even attempt to discuss the novel's categorization (autobiography, Bildungsroman, etc.) since it is so controversial and multi-facetted. This mention of it should only be saved for the Genre/Style section. The second paragraph in this section discusses more of the book's reception than it should, so there should be a whole new section just for that.

Summary: It is way too long! There is a question about how much historical background should be included (which I think most of it probably doesn't need to be), but all the specific details about the plot (like Dialectic Materialism and the one Kurdish author she liked) are highly unnecessary. Especially since this contains the plots of both novels, this needs to be much shorter.

Genre/Style: While it is important to mention Art Spegeilman and Maus , this section strays a bit when it illustrates the history of the graphic novel genre. It needs to make a more clear relationship to Satrapi's work, saying "in a similar way to Speigeleman's Maus series, Satrapi...". It also needs to explain a bit more about how this novel is revolutionary for Iranian women in literature (like how the Naghini article does).

Character List: There shouldn't even be a character list section! But if it were to remain, I would leave out almost everyone listed except Marji, mom, dad, grandma, Anoosh, and maybe Reza.

Analysis: There is no analysis section! And that is especially troubling since this novel is so tough to decipher exactly. But it should be noted that some of the analysis of Genre and Style should probably not show up here.

Film/Persepolis 2.0 sections: Of course, these stray from the original formula for a Wikipedia book article, but these are very necessary additions to the article that should probably stay.

Publication: Contrary to Wikipedia's guidelines for a book article, I'm not sure this publication section is needed (it's not present anyway). The information here could probably go in the background section as well. The mentions of the publication history in the lead section should also be either moved to the background with the rest of the information both publication, or should be moved to an entirely new section.

Reception: This definitely needs its own section! This should discuss the censorship it has faced in schools in addition to overall audience reception.

Plan
- I will rearrange the article's sections (moving "Trauma" after "Societal Discrimination and Racism" and moving "Terminology" after "Demographics") to improve the flow of content in the article.

- I will substantially contribute to the lead section in order to provide the background of the article that Wikipedia's standards require.

- I will substantially contribute to the "Trauma" section through examples, further explanation of historical and intergenerational trauma, sources, and sourced contextual information. This is to improve the reliability and the readability of the article's content.

- I will might also create a new section in this article entitled "Spirituality." This section would provide information to a substantial issue in the Native American community that has previously been ignored.

- Throughout the entire article, I will delete unnecessary details and quotes to keep the article concise, rearrange paragraphs and sentences within sections to improve the flow of ideas, and rephrase some existing material to better neutralize the article's tone.

"Contemporary Native American Issues in the United States" Content Drafting
~All contributions and edits will be made in italics~

~The citations I am contributing below are referenced by the above works cited~

Trauma
Trauma among American Indians can be seen through historical and intergenerational trauma. It has been scientifically related to the abuse of alcohol and substances and high rates of suicide among American Indian populations.

Historical Trauma
Historical trauma is described as collective emotional and psychological damage caused by traumatic events in a person’s lifetime and across multiple generations. Native Americans experience historical trauma through the effects of colonization such as wars and battles with the U.S. military, assimilation, forced removal, and genocide. Outside of war and purposeful genocide, a senior lecturer on Native American literature and culture Dr. Carrie Sheffield maintains other causes are equally traumatic. She asserts that Native Americans experienced historical trauma through fatal epidemics, forced relocation to reservations, and the education of Native children at boarding schools.(14) Even though many American Indians did not experience first hand traumatic events like the Wounded Knee Massacre, multiple generations are still affected by them. On December 29, 1890, over 200 Lakota were killed at Wounded Knee creek, South Dakota by U.S. soldiers. More than half were unarmed women and children. Unanswered pain from the Wounded Knee Massacre is still felt and has been related to present day substance abuse and violence. Experts of Native American trauma and mental health Theresa O'Nell and Tom Ball from the University of Oregon disprove the common misconception that historical trauma only occurs generations prior. They assert, contrastingly, that many current generations experienced trauma due to current violations of treaty obligations, land rights, racism, forcible relocation, and forced assimilation through federally-legislated boarding schools.(1) In their interviews with Klamath and Umatilla tribal members, they observed intense emotional responses to recounted ancestral trauma. For them, one old woman weeped recounting the massacre of her grandmother's tribe, who was just a child at the time.(1)

The loss of lands are also instrumental to the effect of historical trauma on Native Americans. Four-fifths of American Indian land was lost due to the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887. The U.S. government gave American Indian men sections of land and opened the “surplus” to white settlers and government interests. The psychological effects of the Dawes Allotment Act can be better appreciated when looking at American Indians relationship to the land, which is similar for all Indian tribes. Experts in Native American trauma and culture Braveheart-Jordan and DeBruyn propose the land is the origin of the people, who came out of the earth, and is the interdependent and spiritual link to all things. For the Klamath tribe in the Pacific Northwest, the land provided the resources and lessons necessary for the tribe's growth, so they hold a responsibility to respect and protect the land.(1)

To understand the mechanism and impacts of historical trauma, a different understanding of time is often used. O'Nell and Bell interviewed members of the Klamath tribes and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) and documented their experiences and stories to craft tribal genograms, a pictorial display of the tribe's psychology and history. At the end of their research, they were instructed by these tribes to draw the genogram in a circle as opposed to the traditional linear form. Additionally, they were instructed to start with creation and progress in the counterclockwise direction all to maintain the tribe's "spiritual truth."(1) This was in order to not only connect the tribe's experiences and their psychological effects, but to interconnect the tribe's other networks like families, cultures, and spiritual beings.(1)

Intergenerational Trauma
American Indian youth are confronted with the burden of intergenerational trauma, trauma that is passed between generations by historical or cultural trauma. A study looking at two generations of American Indians and their relationship to psychological trauma found that participants who experienced traumatic events early in their lives usually abused substances to cope. The abuse of alcohol and drugs are unhealthy coping mechanisms that many American Indians learn to use at a young age by observing parental practices. Often youth begin to take on these traumas and can abuse alcohol and drugs to the point of death in some cases. This can contribute to American Indian adolescents exceeding the national average for alcohol and drug related deaths; being 1.4 and 13.3 times higher. Menzies also proposes that government-sanctioned boarding schools are a key proponent of intergenerational trauma for Native Americans. He claims that former students adopted parenting methods like corporal punishment and loud berating tactics which then traumatize the children in a similar way.(10) Additionally, Dr. Sheffield suggests that Native Americans experience a degree of intergenerational cultural trauma. According to Sheffield, the United States is a collection of "settler colonies" where the colonizers have not left. Therefore, the European-influenced culture grew to dominate the existing Native American culture with offensive representations like a "savage" and a "dying breed."(14) These influences, according to Sheffield, collectively lead to the loss of cultural cohesion in the Native American community.(14)

Boarding School
Many American Indians were assimilated into the Euro-American culture through boarding schools that were designed to 'civilize' them. “Kill the Indian and save the man” was the motto and belief. Some documented practices to assimilate children at these boarding schools included shaving of children's hair, corporal punishments for speaking in native languages, manual labor to sustain the campus facilities, and intense daily regimentation.(6) A less documented practice includes the use of DDT and kerosene in children's hair upon arrival to the boarding schools.(6)

Experts on Native American trauma support that boarding schools were a key proponent of intergenerational trauma. Former students who survived the schools turned towards alcohol and drugs to cope with the trauma. These coping methods were then passed on to their children since they seemed like acceptable means of handling trauma. These former students also use similar parenting practices they received at boarding school on their own children. As explained by Peter Menzies, the clinical head of Aboriginal Services at the Center for Addictions and Mental Health in Toronto, the trauma suffered by these former students is continued into their children's generation through parental methods and modeled substance abuse.(10) Menzies furthers that because the former students abused substances to cope with their trauma of boarding school, the children of these students cope with this trauma the same way.(10)

In response to the psychological and intergenerational trauma caused, the National Boarding School Healing Project (NBSHP) was launched as a partnership to document these experiences and their effects on Native Americans.(6) When some participants were asked about potential healing methods to their trauma, they suggested that communities in general should return to traditional Native American spiritual practices while former students of boarding schools specifically should attempt forgiveness in order to release internal turmoil and hatred.(6)

Solutions
Many researchers, psychologists, counselors, and social workers are calling for culturally competent practitioners as well as using culturally appropriate practices when working with American Indian clients. The Wellbriety Movement creates a space for American Indians to learn how to reconnect with their culture by using culturally specific principles to become and remain sober. Some examples are burning sage, cedar, and sweetgrass as a means to cleanse physical and spiritual spaces, verbally saying prayers and singing in one’s own tribal language, and participating in tribal drum groups and ceremonies as part of meetings and gatherings. Dr. Michael T. Garrett, an assistant professor of counsel education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, proposes that psychologists must adopt mental-health practices that cultivate Native American values rather than conflicting contemporary mainstream American ideals.(4) Some of these views include interconnectedness of the mind, body, and soul, the connection between humanity and nature, internal self-discipline, and appreciation of the present while the future is received in its own time.(4) These are partly in response to the varied degrees of acculturation Native American individuals present. Garrett describes some possible degrees of acculturation: "marginal" where Native Americans may speak English with their native language and do not identify totally with neither mainstream American ideals or tribal customs or "assimilated" where Native American individuals have embraced mainstream American ideals and renounced their tribal familial connections.(4)

Additional solutions, as proposed by the Klamath tribe, are government restoration of land rights and the following of past treaty obligations. They propose that the restoration of tribal recognition by the federal government has partly healed their historical trauma.(1) They maintain, however, that intergenerational trauma will not be healed until their traditional relationship to the land is restored in order to ground the tribe's "immortal connections" back to their place in the world.(1) For the Klamath tribes, another solution is to constantly remember their history through their counter narrative rather than through the dominant narrative of non-Native oppressors in order to preserve the tribe's formerly oppressed spirit.(1)

Lead Section
Contemporary Native American issues in the United States are issues arising in the late 20th century and early 21st century which affect Native Americans in the United States. Many issues stem from the subjugation of Native Americans in society, including societal discrimination, racism, cultural appropriation through sports mascots, and depictions in art. Native Americans have also been subject to substantial historical and intergenerational trauma that have resulted in significant public health issues like alcoholism and risk of suicide.

SBaylor (talk) 17:38, 27 November 2018 (UTC)