The final project for this course will be a research-based artifact framed carefully in relation to key concepts related to the study of autobiography. The projects can be creative or critical, and can be performed in a range of media. The only requirement is that they focus on the self–either yourself, or the self-life-writing of another subject.
You might conduct a more traditional scholarly inquiry focusing on a specific autobiography or autobiographical genre. Or, in a similar vein, you might pursue a more comparative project not unlike what you performed in the take-home midterm. These more traditional scholarly projects will be the online equivalent of 10-12 pages, and must incorporate 6-8 secondary sources. I will update this assignment sheet with specific guidance on the structure of these kinds of research projects.
Alternately, you might take a less scholarly approach and produce something intended for a wider audience: a podcast about a specific book or autobiographical theme / genre, for example.
You also have a range of creative options, relating something autobiographical through narrative, comics, music, film, art, poetry, recipes, genealogy. For creative projects, a key component will be the reflective framework you create in relation to the project as you tie your own autobiographical artifact to other examples of the genre and to key concepts related to the study of autobiography.
All projects will be sharable via our course blog, and each will be introduced by a prefatory reflective blog post that will set up your project, which will be embedded or linked to separately. This reflective blog post–which provides an overview of your goals, an introduction to relevant key concepts, and a reflection on what you take to be the key achievements and difficulties of the project–will also form the basis for your final presentations, which will take place during our final exam period.
All projects will go through a process including brainstorming, formulating an informal proposal, individual conferences and peer review, mentored library research, and a final presentation. For your proposal, please offer the following:
- A description of your topic or idea introduced to the reader in a dynamic and concise way.
- A description of the research conversation (including primary and secondary sources) that will provide the crucial material, background, and/or methods for the project. Please also note where you see this project aligning with some key ideas or concepts in Reading Autobiography.
- A description of what tools you might use. This might involve film production software, webpage design programs, or podcasting software, depending on the project.
- A statement of the project’s purpose and significance. What knowledge or experience does it make available? What exigence drives the project?
Final presentations should run between 6-8 minutes. The “home base” for your final presentations will be the course blog. This is where you will post your final project under the “Final Project Reflection” category. Please make sure you select this category. This final project post will evolve from your proposal. In your presentation, please introduce the project using the first three bullet points of the proposal. Then give us a suitable “taste” of the project itself (presenting or reading creative work, playing excerpts from a podcast, delivering a section of your research paper, etc.). Then conclude with a brief reflection grounded in the final bullet point of the proposal prompt: tells us why this project matters to you, why it should matter to us, and what you learned while putting it together. All final projects will also be made available online–you can link to or embed your projects in that final post.
Grading Rubric: I will evaluate your projects in relation to three basic categories: (1) the quality of your original idea as presented in the proposal and refined in subsequent conversations with me and your peers will be worth 10% of your grade; (2) the quality of the final project itself in relation to what was proposed will be worth 70% of your grade (half of this grade will relate to the quality, depth, and relevance of research); (3) the physical and online presentation of your project will be worth 20% of your grade, split evenly between the presentation itself, and the online delivery of your project.