If you'd like your open project returned to you, include a self-addressed and self-stamped envelope, mailing container, or box. If it is too large for the mail, I will store it in my office for the summer. Contact me to pick it up sometime between May 15th and August 20th.

 

English 331 Open Project

Spring 2009

35 pts. Possible (35% of semester score)

Draft due _______  Completed project due. _______

"[W]omen may speak, but their voices are ventriloquated; therefore, women must invent a new language."  
— Brenda Daly, Authoring a Life

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Overview, Instructions, Purpose, Audience

In keeping with the focus of this course (women writers), and in keeping with some of the concerns of contemporary women theorists, you are free in this project to develop an alternative to the traditional interpretive essay. That is, you are free to explore contemporary writing by women in any medium and in any mode you choose, as long as your finished piece shows conscientious reflection on and detailed engagement with a course-related subject, and as long as it integrates some form of research or critical thinking. You can produce a research paper, do some imaginative writing, create an art work, write a memoir, or experiment with hybrid writing which combines all of the above. The choice is yours.

Your individual assignment and the more specific criteria for its evaluation will be established through one-on-one conversations with your instructor.

Your purpose is to challenge and play with traditional kinds of language in the interests of écriture féminine; that is, in the interests of discovering new, more inclusive ways to think, know, and speak. You also want to develop your own, distinctive relationship to course issues and topics.

Note: to help you put your project in a context and to inform what you are doing generally, you should include with the piece a brief annotated bibliography. Do a little research, that is, on the general topic of your project, on works/projects/methods similar to yours, or on any issue that relates to what you are creating. Has anyone does this sort of thing before? If so, who, where, and how? What do others have to say about the approach you're taking or the statements you are making? Etc.

Here are some possibilities:

  • Write a good, developed short story, a small collection of poems, or a one-act play which in some way addresses issues and topics raised in class. OR construct a work of art (a sculpture, a digital video, a painting, a song or collection of songs) which explores a specific topic/writer/work both analytically and creatively.

    Note: it might be best to have at least some background in creative work if you choose this option. (Virtually everyone in a 300-level English course such as ours has had expository essay writing courses, but not everyone has taken fine arts courses.) Starting from utter scratch, with neither academic nor personal experience in the arts, might be a bit tough. Still, the choice is yours; go for what genuinely interests you. I'll take inexperience into account when I grade your work, but will still hold to certain standards. (See criteria below.)

  • Produce a standard interpretive essay which exploits the resources of electronic media. That is, write a hypertextual essay which includes internal and/or external links, animation, audio, images, author-reader interaction.

  • Experiment with the traditional book or with our usual notions of the page. For instance, you might develop a text which is three-dimensional, requires the reader to physically do something, asks for some new kind of "reading," inverts all of the rules of expository prose, merges English with some other discipline, or which transforms/builds on a traditional piece you or someone else has already produced.

  • Produce an essay which is based especially heavily on feminist research and methods. Feminist research:
    • seeks to empower the persons being researched (rather than reduce them to passive objects of study), and may involve them in the research more completely;
    • seeks to promote political change for women;
    • openly acknowledges researcher biases;
    • might be more qualitative than quantitative;
    • blurs the boundary between the personal and the public; between intuition and reason; between researcher and world.

Have fun, be weird, but remember that your focus/topic should be relevant to class concerns and the works/writers we've been studying. You must also produce a brief bibliography of sources which in some way inform, justify, or otherwise examine the kind of work you are doing or the ideas you are exploring.

 

Class Presentation

Everyone will schedule an informal presentation during the last couple weeks of the term, to give the class an overview of your project and to solicit feedback as well as discussion. This is a credit/no-credit assignment. Your task is to show us a working draft of your project (some version of whatever you've completed to date), with a narrative to explain what you're attempting to achieve and how you are meeting the assignment criteria.

 

Evaluation Criteria and Checklist

_____ Clear focus and purpose, or an imaginative engagement with questions of focus and purpose
_____ Clear method
_____ Ample development and complexity; reflects a minimum of 3 weeks of work
_____ Both imaginative and thoughtful (creative as well as intellectually rigorous; intuitive as well as reflective)
_____ Original and engaging
_____ Informed by ideas, issues, problems, etc. relevant to the course
_____ Good context: includes a bibliography of at least 2 sources which inform and/or justify the project
_____ Consistent mechanical and stylistic conventions, suitable to the kind of text being produced
_____ Sources credited in a way that is suitable to the kind of text begin produced
_____ Instructor approval of topic, approach, and criteria specific to the kind of text you are producing (you should be able to secure this approval through your draft presentation)
_____Annotated bibliography of at least 3 relevant and useful sources, which serve to inform your project and put it in a context.

 

Explanation of Grading

After I read your essay, I assign it a letter grade based on the following:

A = Outstanding (it stands out from the rest; is distinctive and memorable). Especially engaging, complex, and well-developed. Clear and organized as necessary for the kind of text being produced. Very imaginative. Project fulfills all or most of the evaluation criteria extremely well, or, while suffering from a few minor problems, conspicuously excels in most areas of the assignment. 31-35 pts.  

B = Very good. Adequate complexity, development, and interest. Mostly clear and organized as necessary for the kind of text being produced. Creative. Project fulfills all or most of the evaluation criteria well. It may be especially weak in one or two important areas, while better-than-competent in several others—or is competent (if undistinguished) throughout. 26-30 pts.

C = Ok. Clear topic and approach, but may not be developed with enough detail or complexity —or plenty of detail but an inconsistent or fuzzy topic and approach. Project shows some effort, imagination, and thought, but may be noticeably incomplete or simplistic. Fulfills most of the evaluation criteria minimally, or fulfills a few criteria quite well but many others weakly. 21-25 pts.

D = Poor. Very fuzzy and/or very weakly developed focus and approach. No attention to most of the evaluation criteria, though project is saved by minimal attention to one or more key concerns. 16-20 pts.

After assigning your work a letter grade, I fine-tune it with points. (See above.)

 

 

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