School, our class, our work is not a futile exercise, and it is not separate from our living.   For the final project each group will find some way to bridge the gap that makes it hard for others and sometimes even ourselves to connect what happens in/with class to larger community.  Every group will find some way to 1) synthesize their individual academic and creative work, other parts of the class conversation, and at least one contemporary text not on our syllabus relevant to the theme your group will focus on in order to 2) present some clear, cogent and well cited aspect of the group’s work and thinking to a community beyond our class.  The title of this assignment is “We Monsters”; the title is a reference to a desire for you to think both about and with the ways the literature in this class explores the idea of monsters and monstrosity (i.e. their cultural functions as mode of regulation and resistance).   The “we” in the “we” monters refers both to your individual group memebers and our class as a whole but also to some community outsside our class to which your group want to speak.  If monsters in their most oppressive and violent functtions are made by binary opoositions that define who/what’s in and who/what’s out (and if the radical and resistant possibility of the monstrous comes from the poten to blur such lines and to use liminal  margins to find new and disruptive possibilities), then we should think of our learning and learning in general as not an isolated endeavor separated from the world outside.   It’s not a matter of school or the real world; the educated and the not educated;  smart and ignorant;  students and workers;e etc.  The hope is that in some way your project  will transverse those lines and  unleash the monstrosity of learning together.  I want your projects to explore how the classroom  and what we do in the classroom as not unrelated to the lives of marginalized adolescents, minorities, and other who might be made into monsters but rather that knowledge and thinking are bound up with monsters and the monstrous.

There are no requirements for what aspect of the class your group wants to focus on.  Nor is there a requirement for how you have to extend that work beyond the bounds of our classroom.  In addition to the project itself, I am only asking for a 1-3 page write up detailing the thinking and aims behind your group’s project.

What I am looking to see is

1. Has your group picked a focused and clear aspect of our class work and thinking to share with a community beyond the class.
2. Does your group highlight your assigned text in your project?
3. Has your group identified a clear community they want to share their project with?
4. Does the manner in which you communicate your work relevant to the community you’re communicating to?
5. Does the manner in which you communicate your work appropriate for the idea and contents you want to share?
6. Does your project include some aspect of each of the following: a) the class’s general discussion b) the specific group’s history research c) your group’s specific literary analysis, d) your group’s specific creative work, e) one scholarly peer-reviewed source and f) at least one thoughtful reference to a related contemporary text not on the syllabus?
7. Have you allowed some way for the community you are sharing this information with to respond or join the conversation?
8. Is your project clearly documented (meaning either I can witness it online or you invited it to me or you made a video or photo album, etc.)?
9. Has your group produced a 4 page project write-up in which you explain the “what” and “how”of your project choices and the “why” of how those choices address a) the above requirements b) your main point/theory/thesis on monstrosity/liminality/adolescence and/or yourcentral text and c) reflection on the results of your project.

Grading Rubrics

Thoroughness: Do you include all of the items in  # 5.

Creativity:  Questions 3, 4 & 6 relate to your creativity.

Clarity:   The other questions above are related to clarity.

Write up and Documentation:  Did you turn in a clear, well-written, and accurately cited write-up.  Did you include some sort of documentation for me to have access to this project?