The Basics
As the syllabus for the course explains, your final projects should expand on materials and discussions central to the course and may be composed in a variety of genres or media:
• the academic essay (or review essay)
• the literary essay
• fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction (if you’re confident with these genres)
• podcast, radio program, or short film (if you’re confident with these media)
Click on Extended Entry for details.
Genre
You’ll want to be sure that you choose a genre or medium with which you have enough experience (or time and confidence) to illuminate questions or problems central to the study of literature and cognition. Your projects should be motivated by the pursuit of understanding genuine questions and should be composed with a clear sense of audience in mind. We will devote considerable time to drafting, exchanging feedback on, and revising these projects.
What Do I Mean by "Expand on Materials and Discussions Central to the Course"?
Whatever your choice of genre, it's a good idea to identify a question (or set of questions) to give you focus and motivate your project. Such questions should, obviously, be clearly related to the course's focus on the many ways that research in cognition, perception, emotion, and consciousness can help us understand literature (or the arts in general). The possible questions are many, but I'll give you a few examples:
• A scholarly essay might bring together research in literary criticism and cognitive science to focus on a question like this: How do Virginia Woolf's and Lauren Slater's narratives represent key differences (and similarities) between early twentieth- and early twenty-first-century understandings of consciousness?
• A short story might involve a narrative that dramatizes a question like this: What's the relationship between ordinary perception and hallucination?
• A podcast might draw on memoir and memory theory to explore questions like these: How many types of memory are there, and how do different types (say semantic and episodic or conscious and unconscious) shape identity?
• A web version of a critical essay, enhanced by film stills and embedded video, might explore a question like this: How do film adaptations of literary works that foreground consciousness use visual language to represent the first-person experience of characters?
Help with New Media Projects
If you decide to make a podcast, web site, video, or any other new media project, I can help you get the help you might need with the necessary software or equipment. That said, you should be sure you shape such projects so that they're manageable.
Deadlines
Tuesday, November 20
Proposal, including "motivating question(s)" (on your blog)
Tuesday, December 4
Reflection on your progress (on your blog)
Saturday, December 8
Drafts to Writing group (by e-mail; to be workshopped in class on Tuesday, December 11)
Friday, December 21
Final Projects due
Peer Review Groups
See assignments for peer review groups below. Members of each group will read and respond to each other's proposals (Nov. 20), Reflections (December 4), and Drafts (December 8). Follow the same procedures we've used for in-class workshops: Start with the positive and suggest where the potential lies, but pay your peers the respect of taking their work seriously and giving it your honest critical assessment.
Group 1: Jessica, Rebecca, Chris
Group 2: Jennifer, Maryellen, Andrew, Dominik
Group 3: Arielle, Valerie, John Rice
Group 4: Lucy, John Currie, Jenna
Comments (4)
In the end, as a final draft, how long should a written project be (as a scholarly essay, or a short story)?
Posted by Rebecca Pesantez | October 31, 2007 2:13 PM
Posted on October 31, 2007 14:13
Good question!
Length isn't as important as developing a serious project fully enough. But I realize that's vague. The real answer is that each project will be diffent, and we'll discuss both scope and length in your peer groups as the projects develop. To give you something to go on, though, a good range for written projects 4,000 - 5,000 words. This is just an approximation though.
Posted by Jason Tougaw | October 31, 2007 2:17 PM
Posted on October 31, 2007 14:17
Professor Tougaw:
I feel that Dec. 8th may be too soon to ask for a draft. Can we be flexible on that date? Especially considering that there is another novel that must be read by 12/04. You may or may not remember that I have read that novel already, but I will have to re-read it fast, and the others will need to read it a first time.
Maryellen
Posted by Maryellen | October 31, 2007 6:18 PM
Posted on October 31, 2007 18:18
Maryellen:
The timing is tricky. You'll need time to read each other's drafts before class, when we'll workshop them.
One alternative: If others feel teh same way, we could try rescheduling class for Thursday, December 13, the day Oliver Sacks will speak on campus. If we could arrange to have class before the lecture, then that deadline could be postponed to the 10th, giving you the weekend.
We can talk about it in class Tuesday.
Posted by Jason Tougaw | October 31, 2007 7:27 PM
Posted on October 31, 2007 19:27