Final Project

“Making, Sensing, Reading”- an exhibition exploring blackness in american literature

For the final project, our class will curate an exhibit tentatively called “Making, Sensing, Reading.” The four components of this project are:

I – The piece students create

II – The accompanying exhibit materials (description, background sheet, artists statement, and thesis statements)

III – Project check ins

IV – Self/Group Assessment Sheets

These components are also the four areas I assess in calculating the grade. Each is worth 25%. For the most part each group member should receive the same grade for the first three categories. Students will not necessarily receive the same grade on the Self/Group Assessment sheets, which means that there may be variation in the grades that some group members receive for the project as a whole.

The remainder of this page includes a more detailed description of each of the four components.

I. Students will work in small groups in order to create a piece around one of the course texts.

  • Your piece must be in conversation with some aspect of the course text assigned to your group.
  • The piece you create must engage at least four of the six senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, kinesthetic). The piece does not have to engage each sense equally.
  • There are no restrictions on the form, medium, genre, etc. your piece can take. However, your piece must be something you can include in our end of semester exhibit. (Meaning if you make a video, then you need to plan to screen it in the space of our exhibit, which may need to be our classroom, though I am exploring the possibility of securing a more flexible space.
  • The overall form and the induvial formal choices you make in creating your piece should be intentional, in conversation with the the text and what you’re hoping to foreground or bring to life about the text.

II. As part of the project, students will create the accompanying material to exhibit along with the piece they create:

1 – Brief description of the piece that includes:

  • Group member names
  • Title of the piece
  • Date
  • List of medium and materials
  • 1-3 sentence description of piece

2 – Background about the text that inspired your piece. This background sheet should include the following:

  • One paragraph summary of the text
  • One to two paragraph that provides relevant biographic information about the author.
  • At least two paragraphs discussing the publication and/or reception history of the particular text;
  • At least two paragraphs that provide historical context for the setting of the text;
  • At least one paragraph that provides more in depth background or historical context for a specific person, place, thing, or event in the text.
  • Two suggested further readings (formatted as a full MLA style bibliographic entry)
  • Bibliography with full citations for sources quoted, referenced and/or consulted in creating the background.

3 – A one page (single spaced) reflection about the connection between the text and your piece. This reflection should address the following:

  • A description of the piece: The description should detail “what” you intended your piece to be (e.g. what category, genre, medium, etc.) and what your intended your piece to do (e.g. immerses audience in sensory overload; transports audience to a specific place and time; brings a particular character or moment between characters to life; realizes an invention, recipe, etc mentioned in the text, and so on.)?
  • A discussion of the text, to which the piece responds: This discussion should address: Which aspect of the text is your piece trying to make knowable (i.e. what moment, what detail, what tension, etc.)? Why did you select this aspect to focus on? What did your discussions about your individual close readings and interpretive claims about the text help the group as a whole to notice, realize, and/or understand about this aspect of the text? What did you as a group ultimately want the piece you created for the exhibit to foreground about this aspect of the text?
  • A discussion of your formal choices: This discussion of the various formal choices you made in creating your piece should both identify each of the key formal choices you made and explain how each choice supports what you wanted your piece to foreground about the text and how.
  • A reflection: You should include a reflection on the strengths and limits of the version of the piece you actually created. This reflection might include an assessment about about the degree to which the piece is and does what you intended to be; the degree to which the piece might be more and/or do more than you intended it to do.

4 – Each member of your group should prepare a one-two paragraph thesis statement about the text.

  • Your thesis statement should make an interpretive close reading based claim that addresses the following question: As a whole how do you think your particular text thinks about, or asks us to think about, blackness? (You may substitute “think about” and “think” with “know” if you find the substitution helpful.)
  • Your thesis statement should include your claim, any relevant contextual information, an overview or “roadmap” of at least three arguments that support your premise.
  • These arguments, which may feel like sub-claims, should each be rooted in examining the relationship between some aspect of the text’s form and some aspects of it’s content.
  • Lastly you must be sure that at least one of your arguments (if not your whole premise) examines the aspect of the text that your group chose to focus on in creating your piece.

III. In order to help insure that your group is on track to successfully completing this project, and as a means of providing you with feedback along the way, there are several Project Check-ins that each group must complete. These check ins are not graded, but they must be completed. I factor your use of the check ins to the final grade. Groups are also welcome to speak with the professor during office hours (either as a whole group or through one or two representative[s] for the group). The following check-ins / workshops are required. (Due dates will be on the syllabus page.):

  • Project Proposal paragraph
  • Project Proposal
  • Project Check In
  • Exhibit Workshop/ Mock Run Day
  • Exhibit Day

IV. Self / Group Assessment Form:

Each group member will complete the assessment form, which I will post to the class site the last week of classes. I am the only person who will read these assessment sheets. The assessments sheets should be done individually, not as a group, and they should be done ideally after the exhibit day. Deadline will be on the syllabus page.