Final Project
Your final project for this course will consist of three parts:
- A 6-8 minute oral presentation on a topic of your choosing.
- A written summary of your research.
- An annotated bibliography of sources about your topic.
Selecting a Topic: Your first step is to select a topic you’d like to explore for your final project. Choose a topic that genuinely interests you! Once you’ve chosen your topic, craft a question about your topic that will guide your research.
Submit Research Proposal: Come to class on Monday, November 27th with a brief written statement describing your topic. What will you be focusing on? What question are you asking about your topic? What is your particular interest in this topic?
Researching Your Topic: You will consult a minimum of four (4) sources in researching your topic. At least one of your sources must be a scholarly source.
Planning Your Presentation: The format of your presentation should be fairly straightforward, comprised of three parts: What question was I hoping to answer about my topic? What did I discover through my research? What conclusions can I draw on the basis of this research? You are welcome to use visual aids and the technology available in the classroom during your presentation, but keep in mind that I am more interested in the quality of your ideas than in any fancy bells and whistles! You may use notes when delivering your presentation, but you may NOT read from a prepared text or script. You are encouraged to think creatively about how best to share your subject with the class!
Presentation Schedule: Presentations will take place on December 4th, December 6th, and December 11th in class and should be around 6-8 minutes long. We will be pulling numbers from a hat to determine the order of our presentations. You are welcome to trade numbers with a classmate as long as you inform me of the change.
Research Summary: Your research summary should be 5-6 pages long and should follow the format of your presentation. Begin with a description of your research project. What question or questions were you hoping to answer? What did you learn through your research? What conclusions can you draw on the basis of your research? What surprises did your research yield? What questions are you left with?
Annotated Bibliography: You will be preparing and submitting an annotated bibliography of all the sources you used in preparing your presentation. You will be using MLA 8 guidelines for formatting the bibliography and for providing in-text citations in your Research Summary. (I will be providing a separate handout about this.)
Bibliographies and Research Summaries should be uploaded to turnitin.com as a single Word file by 11pm on Friday, December 15th. Late submissions will not be accepted.
Responding to Sources:
Assignment Due Monday, November 20th in Class
Working with the two articles we’ve read this week, Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and Clive Thompson’s “Smarter than You Think,” compose a four paragraph “mini-essay” organized as follows:
Paragraph #1 – Introduce the issue.
Paragraphs #2 and #3 – Summarize Carr and Thompson (in separate paragraphs).
Paragraph #4 – Offer you own views on how the Internet has changed our thinking.
Keep in mind that you will need to include quotations from both texts. Find skillful ways to integrate quotes into your writing without relying on the verb “says!” Be sure that each of your paragraphs begins with an umbrella-style topic sentence.
For Monday, November 13th:
Read Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (Link to text is on “Readings” tab on class blog.) Bring a hard copy of Carr’s article with you to class.
Essay #3 – Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”
Draft Due: Monday, November 6th (Bring 3 copies of your draft with you to class.)
Essay Due: Sunday, November 12th – Uploaded to turnitin.com by 5 pm.
Length: 4-6 pages, typed and double-spaced
Essay Topics
- Consider Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as a critique of twentieth century materialism. What does the text have to tell us about capitalism, work, and the modern city?
- Explore Gregor’s relationship with his father. What do we learn about the father/son struggle from this text?
- Discuss the use of humor in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. How does Kafka introduce humor into the text, and what is its function?
- Write a focused analysis of the character of Grete, Gregor’s sister. Don’t just describe her development over the course of the narrative; analyze its significance in relation to the story’s main events.
- Kafka famously said that literature should serve as “an axe to break up the frozen sea within us.” Discuss the meaning of his words in relation to The Metamorphosis.
- Focus your attention on the conclusion of the novella. How does it reshape our understanding of the text as a whole? To what extent does it provide a particularly hopeful or bleak view of humanity?
- Explore the theme of alienation in the novella. What does the text tell us about human isolation and about the possibilities for meaningful connection or communication?
Personal Essay Assignment
3-4 pages, typed and double-spaced
Drafts Due: Wednesday, October 11th (Bring three copies of your draft with you to class)
Essays Due: Sunday, October 15th, submitted electronically to turnitin.com by 10 pm
Because this is a personal essay, the form and subject matter of this essay are largely up to you. Use the following prompts to give you some guidance in coming up with a good idea for your essay:
–Explore an experience or decision that arose either from your desire to conform or from your desire to stand out. What was at stake for you? What were the consequences or implications of your choice?
–There is much that is left unsaid in most interpersonal relationships. Explore this topic in connection to a particular issue in a relationship with a close friend or family member.
–Explore your relationship with one of your parents, focusing in particular on the things that are mysterious or unknown to you about your parent.
–Use a personal photograph as a jumping off point for a personal essay that either explores some aspect of your own identity, tells a story that reveals something important about you, or considers the circumstances or relationships that are revealed in the photograph.
If none of these prompts speaks to you and you have a different proposal for the personal essay, you must run your idea by me and get my okay before proceeding with your idea!
Assignment for Wednesday, Sept.6th:
Read Susan Sontag’s “In Plato’s Cave,” the first chapter of her book On Photography. You can find it via the “Readings” tab at the top of the blog.
Sontag uses pretty sophisticated vocabulary, so you will want to have a dictionary (real or virtual) on hand to look up unfamiliar words. Choose a passage from the chapter that makes a strong impression on you and in a brief response (approx. 250 words, typed), explain what interests you about the passage you chose and how that passage might connect to the role of photographic images in your own life or community.
Come to class on Wednesday with a print-out of the essay as well as a hard copy of your written response.