final project

There is no one template for your final projects for this course:

  • some will write traditional essays, and some digital projects
  • some will do individual projects, and some in pairs or groups
  • some will do extensions of the project we’ve already done, and
  • some will pioneer into new areas

But I want to give some sense of the bar you must clear and some sense of how I will evaluate your projects, so here goes:

SCALE:

  • if you write a research paper, it should be at least 4000 words (about 15-17 pp. with a normal font/margins) and consult at least 10 sources. You are free to choose the topic, and I strongly encourage you to consult with me on it via email or in office hours.
  • If you do a digital project, the project should require a comparable amount of work to this kind of essay. This amount will depend on whether you’re working alone on in a pair/group: obviously groups will produce something that requires x amount of work per member, with x being the equivalent of a 15+-pager.

QUALITY:

  • for research papers, I will look at:
    • argument: is there a clear argument that addresses an ongoing critical conversation and "takes sides" or otherwise finds something new to say on the topic?
    • research: is there a "literature review," or survey of prior criticism, in the essay? Have you identified the most important critical voices relevant to your topic and related your argument to their work? Is there sufficient grounding in secondary sources? Are the citation from relatively recent, peer-reviewed sources, such as journals in the field and scholarly books?
    • writing is the prose clear and carefully proofed? Does it follow a standard scholarly citation style, such as Chicago or MLA? Is the argumentative through-line clear and consistent?
  • for digital projects, criteria will vary according to the aims and demands of the particular project, but I will certainly consider the following:
    • design: is the object easy to navigate and clearly organized? Does it have mistakes in its text, broken links, or other infelicities? Does it use a platform or technology that is appropriate to the message it seeks to convey?
    • argumentation: does the object have a clear argument or narrative? Does it take users from point A to point B in a clearly articulated way?
    • audience: does the object communicate to a well-defined audience? Is it properly pitched to that audience?
    • reflectiveness: Is there some kind of reflective writing that contextualizes the object for its audience (or analyzes it for my benefit)? Do the authors (or author) show an awareness of how the object relates to other similar efforts in circulation, or to the long history of reading we’ve examined in the course?

DEADLINES:

  • proposal due 11/17 on blog:

    • max 1000 words
    • careful description of a topic with a clearly defined objective or research question
    • brief mention of a few relevant sources you've found, or, for some projects, relevant examples of other sites or digital objects
  • optional submission of draft or intro or piece due 12/1
  • This is the last date by which I can reasonably turn work around in time for it to help you
  • Anyone can give me anything at any time up to this date
  • No one can give me nuthin' after this date: capiche? final due 12/15

OTHER STUFF

  • I'm jotting  a running list of topics as I think of them (or you suggest them in class); feel free to withdraw or deposit new ideas: it's editable.

EXAMPLES:

To see a few scattered examples of projects rooted in making rather than analyzing, take a look at these projects by prior students (shared with permission):

  • Maggi Delgado's remediation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible using the Episodes Interactive platform, which facilitates multimodal online narratives.
  • Lisa's narrative (who prefers to be lightly anonymized) refashioning Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener as a branched narrative navigated by readers using Twine.
  • Matt Rubin's hypertext narrative Farce, which uses a puzzle- or game-like structure to tell a sort of autofiction-y story.
  • Lola Shenu's game reworking Spaulding Grey's work into a game of sorts using itch.io.