Assignment: Write a three- to four-page paper (1.5 spaced) on your family’s historical and/or
contemporary experience in the United States and/or elsewhere, focusing on the significance of natural
resources in shaping the lives of family members and/or yourself. If you wish, you may write on a
friend or interview the subject’s family history.
Goals: This assignment is intended to help you think about the personal significance of natural resources
to you and your family, not to ask you to share anything that you feel is private.
Guidelines: There are no specific guidelines for how to structure your paper. Rather, here are some
suggestions for how to approach the assignment:
1) Examine one or two key ways in which natural resources have played a part in (one or more branches
of) your family’s history–for instance, in terms of work, recreation, health, migration, social position or
identity. You might want to start with a basic distinction between the roles that you and/or family
members have played in relation to specific natural resources as producers (e.g., workers, farmers,
business owners, investors, etc.) or consumers (e.g., users of goods and services such as food, gasoline,
medicines, air, water, wilderness, etc.). 2) Discuss how your family’s relationships with natural resources have been shaped by and have influenced your own and/or your relatives’ identities in terms of culture, race, ethnicity, class, religion,
gender, etc. 3) Look at how connections with natural resources have created or limited social and economic
opportunities for you and family members. You may want to situate this within the context of specific
historical and contemporary events that have shaped family experience. For instance, political and
economic changes in China and Mexico in recent decades have had a great impact on agricultural
regimes, which, in turn, have influenced the lives of millions in terms of economic opportunity,
migration, family cohesion, etc. You might consider how your family members’ relationships to and
experiences of natural resources have changed over time and between generations in the context of
immigration and settlement in the United States, and/or pursuit of upward mobility and the “American
Dream.” 4) Explore the ideas, feelings and ethical positions that you and your family have about the environmental
and social costs and benefits associated with different uses of natural resources. For instance, how do you
feel about the use of petrochemicals or the preservation of wilderness areas? Are there differences
between yourself and other members of your family in this regard? If so, explore why this is so.
5) Center the story of a how a member of your family came to the United States or a specific event in that
story. It is likely that you’ll be amazed at the importance of particular natural resources in shaping this
history.
• Most FNR papers should be narrative and descriptive, without a central thesis or argument. However,
you may structure your paper around an argument if you so choose.
• The best place to start is with your own knowledge and recollections. What do you think is important
about natural resources to you and your relatives in terms of identity, how you relate to nature,
friends, family, etc.? You do not need to formally cite interview subjects in the paper.
• Next, interview members of your extended family, especially those who are from older generations.
Ask them to describe their experiences in terms of specific events and the contexts in which those
events occurred. Then ask how they feel about and understand those events with regard to their own
lives and those of other family members.
You may choose to, but are not expected nor required to, use resources such as articles, newspapers,
books, works of creative art, etc. to situate your family’s experience historically. If you do this, use
parenthetic references in MLA format [e.g., (Chang 23)] and include a bibliography on a separate
page. See the Berkeley Library Style Guide and the Reading, Writing and Reference Module in
bCourses for further guidance.
• 3-4 pages total writing. Additional pages are allowed for images.
• 1.5 spacing / 1” margins / 12-point font.
