Hybrid Project Hack

By Word-Art student request, this page has been created to allow you to hack the hybrid project assignment to suit your needs and goals.

Due Dates

• Project idea/question (1-3 sentences) & preliminary bibliography (3-5 sources) due on Mon., 3/7, by midnight (category = hybrid project idea).
• Comments on project ideas due Wed., 3/9, by midnight.
• Word-artist Meet & Greet, Thu., 3/10, 11:05-12:05, Carolina Inn.
• Project proposals & bibliographies due Fri., 4/1, before class. The proposal should identify precedents, pose a central driving question or problem, and set precise, specific parameters and goals for your project (approx. 250 words & 5-10 sources; category = hybrid project proposal).
• Project drafts due Fri., 4/8 by midnight (category = hybrid project draft).
• Comments on drafts due Mon., 4/11, before class.
• Final project due Mon., 4/25 by midnight (category = hybrid project final).
• Comments on final projects due Wed., 4/27 by midnight.

Description

The hybrid project is a chance for you to direct your own learning in Word-Art and choose your own question to investigate. The project is worth 30% of your course grade, so its scope and the amount of time you put into it should be set accordingly. Although you have a lot of freedom, there are certain inviolable parameters. Your hybrid project must include:

• words & images.
• critical & creative components.
• research & making as ways of knowing.
• reflection on process & product.
• works cited & acknowledgements.

Think of your hybrid project of having three main parts (break the binary!):

1. a critical component in which you conduct research into the theoretical, critical, literary and artistic precedents relevant to your area of your inquiry (“they say”), and engage in conversation with these experts (“I say”).
2. a creative component in which you make something (material, print, or digital) that combines words and images.
3. a reflection essay in which you state your initial goals, reflect on the process of your inquiry, evaluate the success of the product in meeting the goals you set out for yourself, and discuss any remaining questions. You must talk about your feelings!

Parts 1 & 2 may find expression as separate pieces, but they should nevertheless inform one another like yin and yang: your research and critical analysis should influence what you make, and the insights you gain in the process of making something should in turn influence your critical argument. Rather than writing a critical essay and then making something, you go back and forth between modes of inquiry.

Part 3 should come at the end, once you have completed Parts  1 & 2, so that you can reflect fully on the process and product of your hybrid project.

Sample Project Ideas

Here are some ideas that occur to me, but please do not be limited by my imagination.

• You could write a critical argument about ekphrasis in the work of a contemporary poet like Eavan Boland or Terence Hayes, pairing their poems with paintings and making an argument about the relationships they enact. And you could compose your own ekphrastic poem in response to a work of art, inspired by some question your critical inquiry raised.
• You could write a critical argument about a popular meme, analyzing its linguistic  and visual “rules,” and create your own meme, explaining its rules.
• You could write an argument about Kabe Wilson’s remixing of Virginia Woolf’s texts and remix a text of your choice (preferably something much shorter! Beware the Excel spreadsheet).
• You could create a supplemental chapter or series of concepts for Sean Hall’s This Means That, building a website to publish your supplement (or using a platform like Atavist.com) and using Photoshop to create your own illustrations.
• You could write an argument about the aesthetic of whiteness in Mary Ruefle’s erasure books and create your own erasure book, using other mediums to call into question the invisibility of whiteness in our racialized cultural logic.
• You could partner with a poet in Alan Michael Parker’s Advanced Poetry class or with a printmaker in Tyler Starr’s Advanced Printmaking class to create and bind your own book of poems and images and write an argument about how your book fits into a particular tradition of illuminated books.
• You could explore the myriad tools and platforms available to you on Davidson Domains and online, making a map, timeline, or visualization that offers a history or analysis of specific word-art tradition, such as a short history of ekphrasis via a JS Timeline, a JS StoryMap of one of Blake’s plates, an Omeka archive of books in the RBR by a particular author or press, or a Scalar article that incorporates annotated video.
• You could peek ahead on the syllabus to explore all the cool print and digital word-art texts we’ll be reading, write about one and make something in the same tradition. Also explore the posts in the “Tips” section of this website, including the one that describes digital tools other than WordPress.

Notice how my initial examples have distinct, separate critical essays and creative artifacts, but the digital examples blend these categories, because publishing digitally requires you to be both author and designer of your work, attentive to both content and form, as well as to verbal and visual messages.

Collaboration [Who’s interested?]

Who would be interested in exploring a topic or project collaboratively?

• Annie
• Luke
• Summer
• Aly

Hackable Parameters

• Do you want to work independently or in collaboration with others?
• How long or big should your hybrid project be?
• How many sources should you consult?
• How many tears will you shed trying to make it perfect?
• Do you need approval for your proposal? From whom?
• How should we set up peer critique and workshops? (We… shouldn’t? Those who feel that they need a second or third opinion should be encouraged to seek them out on their own time and to ask for advice from people who really understand the field(s) their project falls in.)
• Who will grade your project and based on what criteria? (That is such a scary question.)
• Should you be required to create your own rubric for evaluating your hybrid project? (Nope! If I end up grading my own project, I would prefer to at least to grade it according to a standard, preset rubric.)
• Can you find a way to take any visual image and make it about your love of hamsters?
• What other rules should we set?
• What issues am I overlooking?