Final Project

You’ve written four posts this semester. Throughout this experience, I have encouraged you to capture and share your responses to literary works that you are experiencing for the first time. As we conclude the semester, I want to give you an opportunity to revisit the literature you’ve read and expand on the discoveries you made through the first four assignments.

Since the start of the semester, our course website has been set to private, meaning that only the students enrolled in the course can see the site. You have chosen between publishing your work (making it visible to your classmates) or keeping it private (so only I can see it). At the end of the semester, I will make our entire website public and you can choose to have your posts included in that public site (visible to anyone who finds our website) or set to private (still only visible to me). You also can set a password for any posts you want to share with family and friends (but not the general public).

Possibilities

Select one of the following options for the final project!

Revise Three of your Posts for Publication on our Course Website

Revise three or more of your posts for inclusion in our course website, which I will make fully public at the end of the semester. If you choose this option, you will finish the literary work(s) you wrote about in your posts and make sure to include direct quotation or clips to illustrate the specific features you discuss. You will also need to pay careful attention to attribution statements for images and other content created by other people. I encourage you to make this work public, but you are not required to publish any of these posts to receive full credit on this assignment.

Please add the “final project” category to posts that you are revising for this assignment (but also keep the original category).

It can be hard to understand how citation and attribution statements can work together in a publication. I created a presentation to help with this. Remember that when you incorporate an image alongside the text of your project, you should include a caption below the image that includes an attribution statement. To craft an attribution statement, follow the guidance at this Creative Commons article. If you use the image in a context where captions are not possible (if it is included as a featured image that doesn’t display a caption), include the attribution statement under an “Attribution Statement” heading at the bottom of your page. Note that you can include copyrighted images if you are offering commentary on that image in your post because of the fair use limitation on copyright. You still need to include an attribution statement making it clear who holds the copyright (I typically add “all rights reserved” after the name of the copyright holder).

I will want to see at least one completely revised post when we meet for our individual conference so I can give you feedback. More is better!

Revise a Plot Summary on Wikipedia

This option involves expanding on the work you started with the plot summary assignment to actually make changes to the plot summary of an article on Wikipedia. If you select this option, you will plan revisions that will make the plot summary more accurately meet the guidelines provided for Wikipedia editors and then complete a few Wiki Education trainings (listed below) to prepare to make the changes to the actual article on Wikipedia. Your work on this project will be public. I will help you create a Wikipedia account. The Wikipedia username you select and the changes you make to the article will be visible to anyone who wants to view them (even if another editor changes your edits, your revision will be in the article’s history).

I will want to see a draft of your revisions to the plot summary when we meet for our individual conference so I can give you feedback and walk you through making them public.

**As discussed in class, if you choose this option, I want you to create a post on our course website reflecting on the experience of editing the Wikipedia article and also sharing your thoughts on how a change to the plot would impact the story. This post can be set to private or made public.**

Be a Tour Guide for a Text from the Past

This option gives you an opportunity to expand the edition you started with the storyworld assignment, preparing something that future students in this course could use. I encourage you to make this work public, but you are not required to make this project public to get full credit for the assignment.

  • Only annotate the portion of the text you’ve read
  • You can keep your edition in a private Hypothesis group or make a public version that will be shared.

I will want to see a revised draft of your editorial introduction and your notes when we meet for our individual conference so I can give you feedback.

Create a Text Exhibit

In a typical “English paper,” a student presents a claim about a text with paragraphs analyzing specific passages from the text and contextual materials to support that claim. This option invites you to present these same components (a claim about a text or a series of texts and specific passages) as an exhibit of three or more items. More specifically, I invite you to curate a “Text Exhibit” for one or more new texts you’ve read this semester to display in Harugari. Beyond making decisions about what to include in your exhibit, this option also involves taking care in crafting object labels for the items you include. You will decide how much to guide viewers to see what you see in the images you have selected (and how much to leave interpretation open). This option could easily become an exhibit of interesting context for the text (leaving the text itself behind) and I don’t want that, so the only restriction is that at least two of the three items you include in your exhibit should feature actual text (a photo of a specific passage from your copy of the text, an image of the text as it first appeared in print, or some other representation of the text itself). I encourage you to install your exhibit in the hallway outside my office, though you are not required to do this (You can submit a Word document including three images and the object labels for the images as your final project if you wish).

  • I have a collection of thrifted frames you can select from (and there are hundreds more in thrift stores near campus if you want to find your own!)
  • We can print in color up to 11×17 (I will show you how to prepare your image for printing using free tools)
  • Your primary writing for this assignment will be for the object labels to accompany each item in the exhibit. To help you prepare to write in this potentially unfamiliar genre, please review the guidance prepared by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

I will want to see a draft of your object labels during our individual conference so I can give you feedback.

Prepare your Classifications for WonderCat

We have been working all semester to build a spreadsheet of creative works, experiences, technologies, and illustrative features; this option for the final project asks you to revisit all of your contributions to that spreadsheet and refine them for submission to WonderCat. It’s possible you’ve already created an account and entered experiences into WonderCat and it’s also possible you don’t want to create a WonderCat account. You can pursue this project whether you make your work public or not. The goal will be to revisit each of your classification decisions, refine the quotation or paraphrase you’ve offered to illustrate your classifications, and make a few additional decisions:

  • WonderCat Username: Even if you decide not to add your data to WonderCat, this is a useful exercise. Consider whether you want your data associated with your actual name or a pseudonym.
  • A Blurb: Also called “back-cover copy,” a blurb is a short bit of promotional writing designed to entice people to read a text. It is not a summary or a synopsis; it shouldn’t divulge what actually happens in the story. There are likely many different blurbs in the world for the stories you’ve written about this semester. Each time a new edition is published, a new blurb is created. For copyright reasons, we can’t reproduce existing blurbs in WonderCat, but you can take a look at a few to get a sense of how they work. Think carefully about your goals for your blurb. If you submit it for consideration by the WonderCat editorial board, it might be selected to appear on the archive page for that creative work.
  • Your Classifications: The best way to do this is to revise your contributions to our shared spreadsheet. Try to make revisions before we meet for our individual conference—we can look closely at each of your choices and think through tricky decisions together.
  • A Reflection: Making your experiences with creative works public might feel thrilling. It might also feel terrifying. I want to encourage you to write about the experience of making your experiences known to the world (hypothetically or for real). Explain how you made classification, feature, and blurb decisions and what you hope will come from your work on this project.

Expand your Experiment with Character

This option invites you to return to the work you began with our character activity in class. We only had time to make initial decisions about the character you were creating, the storyworld they would inhabit, and the narrative technologies you’d be using. If you choose this option, I want you to do the writing (we can work together to decide how much you want to write…it will depend a lot on the genres you’re engaging with). I also want you to write a brief reflection on the inspiration for your decisions and your assessment of the result. Ideally, you will share what you’ve written with one or more readers and ask them to describe their experience with your work. The easiest way for you to share this work is to create a post, which you can choose to keep private (only visible to me) or public (visible to your classmates).

Another Option?

Let me know what you have in mind. I’m open to new possibilities!