Results tagged “student product” from PEDABLOGUE

In my "Introduction to Literary Studies" course, I tried a new assignment: a Group Dramatic Performance (via Pod- or Video-cast). The guidelines were very general, allowing maximum room for creative expression on behalf of the students. Essentially, I just asked for groups of 4-5 students to independently "record a 5-8 minute performance 'inspired by' the assigned readings in the class this term." Students were told they could use the text as a script, or be creative and try to communicate a point/theme that gives insight into the original text. I also tried to inspire the class by showing them adaptations of works they had read, especially an animated adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" (an impressive stop motion puppet film by George Higham), and we also screened Murnau's Nosferatu as the deadline approached (since, in my opinion, they could identify "home movie" making with the choices made by primitive cinema directors).

The results were almost entirely comedic, but some were very impressive given that I did not facilitate the productions at all with any instructional advice, cameras, microphones, or editing software! I believe we are at a point in college culture now where most students are already facile with such things as converting files to YouTube ready format and editing on a Mac, or finding a camera that will function well enough for the purpose.

Here are the videos that they managed to post to YouTube:

• Goblin Shoe Market (inspired by Christina Rosetti's "Goblin Market" and Nosferatu)
• The Goblin Market (A Lesson in Shopping) (inspired by Christina Rosetti's "Goblin Market")
• Alice B. Toklas Cooking Show (inspired by "Murder in the Kitchen" from The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook)
• The Goblin Market Puppet Pals (inspired by Christina Rosetti's "Goblin Market")
• Annabel Lee Puppet Theater (inspired by Poe's "Annabel Lee")
• Nightmare at Tinker Creek (inspired by Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Rosetti's Goblin Market, Stoker's Dracula, Kafka's Hunger Artist, Arnzen's Domestic Fowl, Gresh's Snip My Suckers)

Students could opt out of video and do an audio recording instead. Here are the two that came in:

• Friends of Dracula radio play (inspired by Stoker's Dracula)

• "Unmasking of the Red Death" radio play (inspired by Poe's "Masque of the Red Death")

We're screening and listening to these one-a-day in my class, and the walls have been echoing with laughter.

Pretty impressive work, class!

I never would have had the courage to try such an ambitious assignment if I hadn't once visited a high school class run by Lawrence C. Connolly at Sewickely Prep Academy, who assigned student groups to all adapt a specific passage from Dante's Inferno in their own ways. They screened their videos and I was so impressed by the outcome that I left wanting to try something similar myself some day. The lesson? Trust student bonds outside of the classroom, and leave lots of wiggle room in your guidelines when giving a creativity assignment. When students have free license they usually will not disappoint.

Here's "Goblin Shoe Market" by Jessica Pilewski, Mike Poiarkoff, Theresa Conley, and Dianna Griffin -- notable for its emulation of a silent film:

I'm teaching an Introduction to Literary Studies course this term, and one of the early assignments in the class asked students to create a "collage that reflects your perspective on literary study". To explain the assignment, I developed a handout that explained what collage artists think they're doing and other requirements for the task. When I passed that around the room, I projected a graphic of a collage I'd made once on the No Child Left Behind Act, and explained my creative process...reporting how I discovered the theme along the way, and suggesting that the collage still meant more than what I intended it to mean.

I was thoroughly impressed by what the students came up with for this homework assignment. Many of the students went far beyond my expectations, and I asked a few if I could share their work here.

I liked Melissa Kaufold's collage entitled "How Do You See Me?" (above), because it interestingly represented the identity of an English student, with competing voices (mostly negative) surrounding the figure -- who herself is a multifaceted construct (the four-fold face) ostensibly holding an armload of books that obscure the rest of her body. A very colorful thought balloon reveals the value in her thoughts about literature, impervious to the onslaught of negativity espoused in the "external" world; the strength of these thoughts is reinforced by the thick black boundaries lines that protect these "thoughts" from interference and keep them relatively cohesive.

The collages of the class as a whole seemed to inherently lean toward conflicts like these. In her collage, "Transcendence" (below), Julia Leksell took an artful approach to semiotics, employing negative/white space in an intriguing way that differed from many of the other collages the students created. Here, she took control over the bricolage of symbols to add her own imagery to the piece, where she portrays a dove-like ascent or emergence from what seems like a pile of abandoned and contradictory signs and symbols:

The diagonal lines in Leksell's postmodernist piece make me imagine that the pictured bird is hefting a weighty net of language, struggling but succeeding to rise. I like the positive message here.

Attempts like these to come to some cogent "perspective" on literary studies opened up the floodgates of discussion in class, and allowed everyone -- whether creative writer, journalist, or literary scholar-in-training, to participate on a fairly equal plane.

I followed up the assignment by having students swap collages and write up analyses of them. We discussed this process as one inherent to both artistic production (crafting sense out of found language and fragments) and criticism (analyzing the whole by breaking down the structure into its parts). This two-pronged approach to the assignment created a dialogue between creativity and criticism in a really successful way, I think. It both raised the question, "What is literature?" and unveiled that it is, if anything, a conversation that meaning-making demands.

[POSTSCRIPT: After posting this entry, Dr. Davis from Teaching College English asked if I'd share the guidelines. They're relatively specific to the context of my class syllabus, but I'll gladly share it here, if it helps in any way: