Hi, gang—
Well, many folks think that America is the land of choice: you can
go to McDonald’s and get a big mac or step across the street and get a whopper
from burger king. So in the spirit of ample choices, I give you these
prompts…
Web Project #1: FAMILY SCRAPBOOK
Much of Mark Jeffreys’ essay relies on key photographs from his family—and
especially of his brother Jim—to build his analysis of how the "invisible
cripple" is constructed in our culture. Explore your own family album
or any family/self pictures you have and first build a collage—or narrative—of
you from these photos. Use 5-10 photos. (Note how the collage of photos
will probably be different than a narrative collection of photos.) Organize
and arrange them as you see fit. Now write an essay that approaches
your collage/narrative in multiple ways:
1) by offering a brief caption beneath each picture;
2) by offering a more extended description of the pictures somewhere in
your essay (you can decide where it best goes);
3) by offering a narrative of what the collage or sequence tells about you;
You will also analyze such issues as: why the photo was taken; who took
it and what they seemed to want to represent of you; how it conflicts with,
compromises, or carries out a seamless portrait of you overall; what is erased,
left out, made invisible in this series or collage; what is enhanced, illuminated,
brought to the foreground in this series or collage; what someone else—someone
who doesn’t know you at all—might interpret about you from this series or
collage, and any other relevant analytical frames you can think of.
REMINDER:
For this project, try to remember key emotional, social, or economic events
that link up to the years you are dealing with in the photographs. Following
are additional questions that you might consider in developing your analysis
of the visual arguments put forth by the photographs and the narratives that
surround their interpretation.
How did these events shape the family's image of itself?
In what ways do these photographs prompt you to reconsider your "self-history"?
What is missing from the photograph? What pictures might have been
taken but never were? What events or people were not recorded?
What might it have been impossible to represent?
What scenarios are seen as possible subject matter for the family album?
In other words, what remains invisible within family archives?
What do these photographs tell you about the ways in which particular people
in your family (e.g., genders) are positioned in the family and/or world?
What social and cultural values and ideas shape the family's visual representation
of itself?
What does the family album or particular snapshots tell you about power
relationships within the family?
Does a particular series of photographs represent power struggles between
men and women or between adults and children?
Web Project #2: MEMORIAL PROPOSAL
In Deborah McDowell’s essay "Viewing the Remains" she discusses the memorial
interventions made by African American women whose sons have been killed and
how these women have "seized the political stage, refusing to be relegated
to roles as passive mourners." Likewise, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson describes
the FDR Memorial as a "decentered and interactive public space" that contrasts
with instructional and less democratic sites. These acts of intervention
and revision might be considered examples of memorial practices. This
assignment thus asks you to create a proposal for a memorial-site. You
should either choose a person, community, or event that you believe should
be memorialized and is not or choose to propose and anti-memorial that that
tells a story different from the one depicted by an existing national memory-site.
Before you create your proposal however, you must first describe the event
to be memorialized, where you intend to place the memorial and why, and how
you imagine the memorial-site would look. Consider the national narratives
that you will want the site to offer and what or whose experiences will be
represented. You may create a sculpture of some kind, a digital text,
or web-site. Be creative. However, you must accompany your visual
"text" with a brief essay (about three pages) in which you describe your intentions
as its maker, the historical memories you hope it will foster, and your hopes
for its public reception.
As you create your memorial proposal, you might consider:
The relationship between the visual and verbal elements and
how the memorial imagines its audience;
Whether the visual and verbal elements complement or contradict each other;
Whether the memorial invites a participatory role from viewers;
The political context and geographical location and how the memorial will
interact with surrounding structures;
As a model you might want to look at Maya Lin’s proposal for the Vietnam
Memorial on pages 312-334 in Convergences.
Now, as always, if you do any outside research, stick to MLA-style documentation
(see your handbook for guidelines).
This final project will take the form of a website—the writing you do for
the site should be the same as the other essays (approximately 4 – 5 pp),
and in addition, you will give some attention to the VISUAL aspects of your
project: (sketches, photos, graphics, and, of course web design).
Of course, we’ll talk about this in class over the coming weeks, so ASK
QUESTIONS (I’m experimenting with this assignment myself, so your input is
invaluable to me).
that is all…
b