The final group project will count towards 25% of your overall course grade.
For the final project you will work in small groups to create a digital annotation of one of the black performance texts on the syllabus. Your annotations will include a mix of visual, sonic, film, and traditionally scripted annotations. Your annotations, especially your scripted ones, will be based on your group’s well-researched findings about both the general history of this performance text (including, but not limited to: author, performers, crew, venue, promotion, audience, reception, etc.) and specific historical context relevant to at least two aspects of the performance text (i.e. a reference to a famous figure that one of the characters makes; the setting of a particular place at a particular time; or the historical associations with a particular gesture made in a dance). Your group should keep in mind that while annotations provide objective references rather than interpretive claims, what and how an annotator chooses to annotate does in fact guide readers’ attention and help shape what they regard as important. Thus you should think carefully about what you annotate and how. How does your presentation of what is otherwise objective reference material encourage certain connections and discourage other connections? Similarly the group should consider how their individual annotations work as a whole: How do your different types of annotations (i.e. visual and scripted) work together? Do they echo each other or complicate one another? As a whole, what do your annotations seems to focus on? What do they ask the reader to focus on and what might they keep the reader from noticing in the passage? While the annotation do not make explicit interpretations for your reader, what kinds of interpretive arenas might they encourage your reader to enter?
25% – pre-project assignments: A quarter of your project grade is based on the timely and thorough completion of all pre-project assignments (i.e. project check-ins 1 and 2; the group meeting with the professor; and the final in-class project presentation).
25 % – project execution: All members of the group will share this grade.
25 % – project write-up: Your project must include a 1- 2 page, group-authored write-up [double spaced, 12 point Times New Roman Font with 1 inch margins]. The write-up should provide a rationale for some of your group’s project choices by discussing how those choices relate to the group’s goals and organizing principle. The write-up should also make clear how the group’s goals, content, and formal choices connect to or make some significant contribution to at least one of our primary course discussions.
25 % – self and group evaluation: I will pass out a questionnaire the last week of classes, which you should thoughtfully and thoroughly complete by the date listed on the syllabus.
Just Playin' 