In this assignment, “translate” the central concerns and claims from an academic paper in the humanities into the public writing genre of the open letter.
The purpose of your letter is to “translate” what you say in the original paper and how you say it to meet the needs of a public audience and to fulfill a public purpose.
The open letter will thus work to demonstrate what the humanities can do in response to a selected public problem and to show your public audience how such knowledge and skill can impact public discourse and action in the “real world.”
Once you’ve completed your “translation” (reconceiving and composing an academic essay as an open letter, you will be asked to write a reflection on this process, exploring how the original argument may have changed through the translation assignment (what parts of the paper were used, what parts were changed or discarded). Your reflection should also consider how your experience of public writing aligns with and/or is different from the more familiar processes of academic writing.
Part I
I chose to translate my history honors thesis. In this paper, I examined legislation and discourse in the U.S. House of Representatives regarding Mexican American rights during the 1970s.
For the open letter, I chose to focus on the issue of voting rights protections in recent years. In particular, I examine the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2023 as it is moving through the legislative process at a slow pace despite threats to voting rights.
Translation Project Part I.pdfTranslation Project Part II.pdfPart II
Addressed to Representative Nanette Diaz Barragán, Representative Adriano Espaillat, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, this open letter urges for the progression of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and continued protections of minority voting rights.
This exercise brought me out of my comfort zone regarding tone, content, and approach, but it has made me more aware of the bridge between the humanities and the contemporary world in a different way.