What is a predator?
Humans often represent carnivorous species as predators, occasionally to glorify their power and the fear they inspire in us. We are going to explore how trends in the representation of predators impact our relationship with other species and our own instincts to kill and eat other animals.
After exploring how a variety of species have been represented as predators by scientists (consider the use of the word to classify insects in On the History and Natural Arrangement of Insects) and artists (from the creators of Jurassic Park to Jaws), our third assignment asks you to find representations of species that have been categorized as predators (or a representation of the concept of predation) that you would like to describe and interpret for future students in this course.
Step 1: Find one representation you want to include and upload a featured image on a draft blog post.
Tip: Your representation(s) can take any form. Media forms include texts, performances, films, images, music, and more. If you select a text, perhaps the image can be the book cover or an image of a page. If it is music, perhaps the album art or an image of musical notation. For a film, a still image would work well–or the promotional poster.
Step 2: Gather information needed for your object label (after making a decision on the representation and image file you want to use) and draft your full blog post. You can see example object labels in my “What is a Predator?” post; we will work together in class to learn how to format a table as clearly as possible, with a caption communicating the license for your object label.
Step 3: Decide what you want to encourage your classmates to notice about the representation you have chosen and compose a blog post that helps them navigate the featured image and any other media you want to include. You can write as much as you would like and you can include as many different types of media as you would like. Make sure that you include citations for information that you quote or paraphrase in your post (we will go over the use of hyperlinks for citations).
Step 4: Submit a full draft by the end of our first week so we can focus in week two on deepening your research and refining the presentation of your findings.
A complete blog post should have the following components:
- Title (same as the title of the representation you are using as the featured image)
- Featured Image
- Captions conveying attribution statements (for all images in the post)
- Object label
- Caption for object label (potentially including a creative commons license for the label)
- Actual post with source material clearly cited
