Your final project for this class will be a public-facing work of humanities scholarship that examines the imaginative and/or ideological power of a story of your choice, in a media form of your choice. In the short assignments leading up to this project, you will develop a line of inquiry—a question or series of questions—that guides your research into the story you have chosen, gather relevant sources and synthesize their ideas, and develop a clear, specific purpose for your project that emerges from your research. You will then create a work of public-facing scholarship that draws on both primary and secondary sources to craft an argument about your story and its (past and/or current) importance. That importance might mean: 1) its significance within a particular historical and cultural context; 2) its significance today, and how that significance relates to and/or differs from its historical significance; 3) its imaginative and/or ideological power within a particular cultural or political system; 4) the significance of finding a way to retell this story in a new way; 5) or how it has been misunderstood or misappropriated.
Purpose
This final project will demonstrate your ability to use research, analyze historical and contemporary events and contexts, and independently and collaboratively develop lines of inquiry, discuss your research and ideas, and go through the drafting and revision process. You will:
Consider the context you are writing in; audience, purpose, discipline, and form should all inform your composition choices
Go through stages of inquiry, research, drafting, feedback, and revision
Synthesize your research and present it to your audience in ways that make sense within your chosen context
Develop a specific purpose that emerges from your research
Task
The final draft of the final project will be made up of two parts.
Part 1: The Thing Itself. In part one, you will be taking your chosen story and examining it in a media form of your choice.
Write a public-facing essay. Your essay should be 1500-1800 words and be pitched toward a non-specialist, non-academic audience(in other words, a traditional classroom essay is not an option for this project). Your public-facing essay should make use of things such as images, links, embedded resources, interviews, personal anecdotes, narrative, and/or other affordances of the form.
Part 2: Notes on Form. In addition to part one, you will write a 500-word reflection that explains your choices and reflects on the drafting and revision process. This reflection does not need to be written in the style of a formal essay. It will answer the following questions:
How did your choice of form impact your project goals? (i.e., why did you decide to do a podcast/essay/whatever, why did you include images, why did you use this tone, what choices did you make to target your audience, etc.?) What were the affordances of this form, and what were the possible inhibitions you faced using this form?
How did your ideas change between your planning/line of inquiry, research, rough draft, and final draft?
How did you deepen your understanding of your chosen story through this project? What changed for you in how you understood this story?
What are you most satisfied with in this project? Why do you think that aspect of the project is working well? How might you apply what you did well here to future work?
What do you wish you had more time to think about, research, or revise?
Checklist for Completion
Complete this checklist before you hand in your final project:
Have you met the required length and content requirements of your chosen form?
Have you included your 500-word reflection?
Have you answered all 5 questions in your reflection?
Does your project include a bibliography?
Does your project explain and analyze research? Where?
Does your project have an identifiable purpose? What is that purpose? Ask a trusted friend, family member, roommate, or tutor to look at/read/listen to your project and explain what they think the purpose is. Then, try to explain your purpose out loud to your friend, roommate, family member, or tutor.
Is your project substantially revised from the rough draft stage? How?
Missing any project components will result in a grade of “Incomplete.”
