For your final creative project, you have a lot of leeway with what you might do, but here are the four basic tasks you need to do
- Analyze one of the works we have read for the rhetorical/stylistic moves that it makes, as well as its structure (Annotation will help you here).
- Use these observations to create your own work that is about more contemporary materials/subjects (or other materials of interest to you). For example, you might create your own Pillow Book about important events/settings in your life (like a Pillow Book about being a student at Baruch).
- Explain, in two pages, how you used these rhetorical moves from the original text, giving examples from your own work in comparison to the original text. What were these rhetorical moves, and how did you use them in your own work?
- During the final exam time itself, present a piece of your creative work (and, if time, some explanation of why you made the choices you did).
You might do this individually or as a group: for example, if you do a scene from a play, you can do this project with a few other people (no more than 4 to a group, though). If you do this individually, you’ll have about five minutes to present during the exam itself; as a group, you’ll have more.
- Note on group work: If you work as a team, you need to provide evidence of the separate roles that you played. If, for example, you put together your own “updated version” of the Kokinshu, each person should be responsible for covering a “theme.” (the Kokinshu selections we read, for example, focused on the seasons and love, though obviously you might choose different categories).
- It should go without saying, but: what you write in these projects should be your own work in your own words. If you are bringing in quotes or even just paraphrasing ideas from outside sources, they should be cited. I’ll say it again: even bringing in someone else’s ideas that you find online is plagiarism if you don’t cite your source (because it looks like you’re claiming that idea as your own, and not acknowledging that you got the original idea from elsewhere). Look up how to cite using MLA for texts outside the Norton: there are hundreds of sites online that can help you find the proper way to cite a source. Since you are handing this in at the end of the semester, if I catch plagiarism, I’ll just email you about it, give you the zero, and factor it into the grade; there won’t be time for you to explain yourself, and moreover, by that point you should have had time to look up what academic integrity policy at Baruch is, as well as ask me any clarifying questions.
Suggestions for what you might do (I’ll add some more in coming days, and you can come up with your own too, as long as you vet them with me).
Create your own Kokinshu:
The Kokinshu, as we began to discuss, is an anthology that uses the technique of association-and-progression to organize the poetry in it (each “series” of poems sticks to one theme, and there are similarities in images between one poem to the next, yet with each poem, there are subtle changes that take us through a “progression”—from the first hints of spring to the height of spring to the fading of spring; or the first hints of a love affair to the consummation and height of the romance to its fading). Observe how this rhetorical technique works in The Kokinshu and then compile/create your own version using the association-and-progression technique. Instead of the poems in the Kokinshu, however, find other poems and arrange them according to a theme where the poems close to each other share similar phrases/words/images but that, when you zoom out, has a larger narrative with a “beginning, middle, and end” (as in the Kokinshu, where poems about the seasons and about love progress to tell a story or to take us through the seasons). You do not have to necessarily use poetry; you might also use other short works in succession. For example, you could take news snippets/Tweets about a particular event or topic, and place them in an order where each Tweet/snippet in proximity shares similar phrases or ideas, but arranged so that they show a progression of some kind (this could work particularly well with political events, as news coverage often uses short phrases to encapsulate larger ideas or topics). You can even use pieces/quotes from the Norton anthology (what we’ve read or other texts) that circle around a particular theme (like duty/right action). Be creative in your materials, but be sure to follow the rhetorical moves of the Kokinshu as you do so.
- Note that this option might apply for The Thousand and One Nights too: you might create a “frame tale” plus some interlocking stories (this would likely be a good “group” option where each person writes a part or parts of a story, so it’s not too overwhelming a project).
Create your own Pillow Book: While the Pillow Book is in the genre of the “pillow,” or notebook/diary that records daily observations (so-called because it would likely be placed near one’s pillow), it includes several different kinds of entries (lists, characterizations of people, stories/anecdotes, etc) and that sometimes it seems to record actual events and sometimes it seems to embellish them. Observe this text for its rhetorical moves as a diary that records the happenings of Heian court life (at least, what Shonagon asserts is important to notice) and write your own “pillow book” that uses her rhetorical moves, style, attention to detail, etc, to describe and characterize a setting that is important to you. This setting could be Baruch college from your perspective as a student, city or suburban life from your perspective as a resident (particularly NYC life), or your neighborhood and its residents/family/friends from your perspective as a part of that community (or even as someone who feels on its outskirts sometimes!). Feel free to be creative with your setting, but be sure to use the moves that Shonagan does to write your own “pillow book.”
Created an annotated edition of a part of a class text: Often while discussing the epics, plays, and poetry in the Norton, we’ve referred back to either the introduction to the text or the explanatory footnotes on the bottom in order to understand better what is going on in the text. While we’ve noted that these footnotes are helpful, they are usually limited to “historical/cultural context”; there are other kinds of footnotes and comments that might be helpful to a reader, such as a gloss on the possible meanings of a word, or an explanation of what a tricky line might mean (and we’ll see this more when we get to Othello, with footnotes that help us to untangle some of the difficult language in the play). My challenge to you is to create an “annotated edition” of a piece/part of one of the texts we read with an audience of Baruch students in mind (particularly Baruch students who might be entering a Great Works course next semester), with an introduction (which can be short—a few pages) and footnotes. What, do you think, a Baruch student would want to know about this text, or should know about this text as they read it? What would you have wanted to know? What kinds of footnotes, or what kind of introduction, would you have found helpful? You might make footnotes that deal with historical/cultural context you research, footnotes that define difficult words/note possible meanings to different words, footnotes that point to important parallels and structural details, footnotes that give a few different interpretations of a passage, footnotes that note parallels in other texts we’ve read, footnotes that point to other more contemporary sources that are useful in understanding the text (like a link to a Youtube performance of the play or song that relates to the text in some way)….be creative, and think about what would be interesting or useful to a future student in this class (or to your past self). Even things like reaction GIFs might be fun here! The best version of this project would use several kinds of footnotes (one that just defines words and gives a little bit of historical context, for instance, is not likely to do as well), and demonstrate that the writer really thought about how to reach their future Baruch audience; you should feel like you are a kind of expert on the text by the time you’re done. With this project, you still need to include a 2-page explanation of why you made the decisions that you did, and make sure to include a works cited page for the research you do.
- A good tool for this would be Google docs, because it would allow a group to work on annotating collaboratively. Check out other collaborative writing apps here: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/wgw/faculty-resources/collaborative-writing-tech-resources/
- If you do this as a group, it would probably be best to decide on “jobs” for each person (one person is in charge of historical context annotations, for example). Remember you still need to do a 2 page explanation of what you did and why—what your role was (which is ultimately a protection for you against one person doing a lot of work and another person being less diligent).
- You will get a zero if you take footnotes from another annotated text, or if your footnotes/introduction plagiarizes from a source outside your own brain (again, you can use that source, but cite it, please, and show what you’re adding to what the source says). That’s still plagiarism. Don’t do it.
- The above bullet point is especially true if you do Othello: there are several annotated editions out there, and it may be tempting to look at those ones for ideas. Avoid even looking at them for “ideas,” because it may be difficult to get those ideas out of your mind (though of course when reading, use the footnotes to understand the play). You will get an zero on the project if you take footnotes from any edition of this play, because that is plagiarism.
Perform a scene from Sakuntala: The Norton preface to Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection notes that the play is now rarely performed, even with the revived interest in theater in India. According to the Norton, this is because “despite its remarkable survival and continuous influence over some 1,500 years, and its wide appeal to readers around the world, Kalidasa’s play seems better equipped to reveal its beauty and complexity as ‘drama’ rather than ‘theater’” (875). In other words, the play is better to be read than to be performed. Yet we did get to see a performance of it this semester, that sought to get across the emotional ups and downs of the narrative. I think, therefore, that the Norton’s assertion is something we might contest! For this option, perform a scene from Sakuntala, keeping in mind that the play, for each act, intends to depict a different rasa, or emotional state in its pure essence, by “blending” the characteristics of an emotional state with “subsidiary states” like anxiety or lovesickness and with “physical signs associated with” each emotion (873; see p. 875 for which rasa goes with each act, as well as the subsidiary emotions). Your goal is to perform this scene and embody the appropriate rasa in it, in whatever way you believe best will convey these emotional states to the audience. You might use exaggerated gestures, masks, music, etc, to depict this emotional state: there’s a lot of creative possibilities here, but keep in mind that your goal is to really get these emotions across to your audience through multiple modes.
- Alternate performance options:
- Do a similar thing with Medea, this time potentially focusing on masks and performing the scene using masks and body movement/language.
- Do a scene from Othello, focusing on highlighting, in how you stage the scene and say the lines, some aspect of the text that you and your group got through careful, close reading that you think the class might miss on a cursory reading or general class discussion (note, though, that this would require you doing some reading in advance, as we are reading this play in the last two weeks of the semester).
- Propose a performance option to me (perhaps one that involves researching the history of how the play would be performed, or one that involves bringing in a more modern-day context/modern music and visuals that you think will help us gain insights into the original play)
(note: you do not have to memorize your scene–you can read it aloud from paper–but you shouldn’t just recite your lines. That’s liable to get your group a C- or below. This goes for all performance options).
