Project

Description

End-of-Term Project

Final Projects in both ENGL 2320 (English Literature from 1700-Present) and ENGL 4500 (British Romanticism)
Students were asked to prepare a final project that told a “story” about the literary periods, authors, genres, or texts they have studied during the semester. While the project required the incorporation of traditional modes of literary critical engagement (critical essay, interaction with peer-reviewed critical materials, close reading of texts), students were challenged to find alternate, creative ways of expressing their particular story to augment the critical work. Students submitted project proposals for review, an annotated bibliography, and prepared a classroom presentation prior to submission of the final project via the <emma>™ project Portfolio tool.

Poetry Anthology

Final Project for ENGL 3050: Introduction to Poetry
A variation on the traditional final paper, this project was designed to encourage student engagement with poetic texts as readers, editors, and critics. Students created an electronic poetry anthology. After choosing an area of interest (a specific poet, a thematic concern, a poetic form), students assembled a collection of poems applicable to that area. As part of the project, students wrote an “introductory essay” that discusses the collection as a whole, drawing attention to particular works in the anthology. For each poem entered, students created a separate page complete with a headnote and, if needed, appropriate textual glosses. Finally, students created a dust jacket blurb and chose an appropriate image to frame the anthology to readers. The anthologies are housed at the <emma>™ project website. A screenshot of one anthology appears below. For an excerpt of one project, click here.

Sound Webzine

Class Project for ENGL 3050: Introduction to Poetry
This project was designed to extend student engagement with a poem from the traditional academic reading to a more personal engagement, as well as add an element of public performance to the reading experience. Each student submitted an entry to an electronic sound magazine. The submission consisted of a sound recording of a poem, discussion of the poem’s significance to the reader, an appropriate image, and a biographical entry. The webzine is housed at the <emma>™ project website. Find a sample zine entry here.

Poetry Translations

Short Assignment for ENGL 3050: Introduction to Poetry
As part of a unit on poetry in translation, students had the opportunity to translate a poem into English from one of four languages (French, Spanish, Italian, German). While the assignment was small, the instructive value was enormous. Students initially dealt with the difficulty of translating not just the words, but the idiomatic meaning of the text. In follow-up class discussion, the students discovered that the poems were over 200 years old, a fact which also needed to be taken into account in translation. Find a sample here.

Learning Community Research Project

Project for ENGL 1101: Learning Community Sections
This research project encompassed two of the course papers. Students chose a topic related to their learning community theme, conducted research, and produced several documents. An annotated bibliography helped them encapsulate main ideas in a research article. The two paper assignments required students to adopt different writing styles and argumentative tactics. The first paper was informative in nature, designed to help an uninformed reader understand the complexities of the topic area. The second paper required that the student take a position related to the general topic area and present effective arguments to support that position.

Project focus by community:
Science: controversial issue in contemporary science (generally related to the application of scientific research)
Pre-Law: current arguments related to Constitutional Amendments
Pre-Business: marketing/new product proposals to a large beverage company.

Small Group Webpage & Class Teaching

Project for ENGL 1101: First Year Composition (Fall 2003)
The classes were divided into small groups and given a selection of readings surrounding a chosen topic. Their responsibility was to create a website that presented the readings to the class and identified and discussed a controversial issue related to the topic. They also chose one of the readings to assign to the class and then led a class discussion of that reading as it related to the controversial issue they had chosen for the website.