Final Project

You’ve written four posts this semester, each one focusing on one of the core elements of narrative. We looked closely at narrators, storyworlds, characters, and plots. 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 (perhaps finishing texts you didn’t have time to finish earlier in the semester) and expand on the discoveries you made through the 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 have the option of setting a password for any posts that you want to be able to share with family and friends only.

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 leave your original posts as they are, but copy all of the content into new posts to revise them further

Check out this presentation demonstrating how to think about citations and attribution statements: both very important when making your work public!

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 assignment four to actually make changes to the plot summary of an article on Wikipedia. If you select this option, you will read the entirety of the text you selected for assignment four (or the entirety of some other text published between 1800 and 1940 that you read for the first time this semester), 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 (Wikipedia has an IP block on our campus, which I can explain more in person). 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.

Be a Tour Guide for a Text from the Past

This option expands on our discussion about storyworld, but takes it in a new direction. Your task with this assignment is to serve as a tour guide for a student who chooses to read a text you’ve read this semester. When you’re reading a text written before you were born, it can sometimes seem that you’re in a strange land filled with unfamiliar rules and languages. You will position yourself as a tour guide for the student who wants a little help as they navigate this experience. I say you’ll be a tour guide, but you’ll actually be an editor. You will compose an introductory note to help these future students prepare for their journey into the unfamiliar, and include notes at moments in the text where you think you would have benefited from an explanation or context. You might consider sharing, in your introductory note, what a person in the storyworld of your chosen text can do that can’t be done in our world (or what can’t be done in that world that can be done in our world). 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.

  • You need to have finished reading the text you select
  • You can complete this assignment using Hypothesis (I’ll help you create a free account and annotate an existing version of the text–perhaps from Project Gutenberg). If you’ve only ever used Hypothesis inside Canvas, you will need to create a free account for the public tool following the instructions here (I will provide guidance in class as you do this): https://web.hypothes.is/start/
  • I will ask you to draft and revise your annotations in a private group named for your edition. This will allow you to share your introduction and notes with me (not all public Hypothesis users). We’ll walk through this in class, but here is guidance on creating a private group: https://web.hypothes.is/help/how-to-create-a-private-group/
“Venn Diagram for Hypothesis Options” by Mary Isbell is licensed under CC-BY 4.0

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

Create a Text Exhibit

In a typical literature 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 and specific passages) as an exhibit of three or more items. More specifically, I invite you to curate a “Text Exhibit” for one new text you’ve read this semester (published between 1800 and 1940) to display on the third floor of Harugari Hall. 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).

You are not required to install your exhibit in Harugari Hall (though I encourage you to do so!). 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 Canva]
  • 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 feedback.

Looking ahead to the “Final Exam”

The final exam activity will involve sharing final projects. I will also set aside at least thirty minutes during the final exam period for each of you to compose a statement of practice, which will describe specific things you have learned in this course and how those things will inform your behavior in the future. This might be related to a future career or it might be related to your non-work life.