Image above: Grand Panorama (Concluded) of the Great Exhibition from The Illustrated London News. Image scan by Philip Allingham. The Victorian Web. 

Assignment Description

Want to read the assignment sheet as a Google Doc? You can access it here.

This is a research assignment with a twist! Your goal is to select, curate, interpret, analyze, and present one “sensational” object or cultural artifact from Victorian Britain (or a territory Britain claimed within its “Empire”). Identify something that caused a sensation in its time, whether that sensation is associated with nervous stimuli, heightened feeling, community experience, or media representation. This assignment is purposefully flexible in its guidelines; this gives you the freedom to experiment with both subject-matter and form. Part of your job is to think about the possibilities for curation within the guidelines below. 

Why curate? Its root is to care, so your task involves discovering, examining, researching, and caring for and about your object. You will conduct substantial research to consider its cultural significance and historical context, analyze its form, close-read its features, and consider any peripheral artifacts that might help you understand its cultural function. You will offer your own interpretation of its significance and/or explain how your object performs its own interpretive work in relation to its context.

What is an object? Your goal is to find something—an image, advertisement, text, poster, photograph, artwork, or small set of things–you understand to be a “sensational object” from the Victorian period. The best projects will have a narrow focus. For instance, if you’re interested in an event that took place in the nineteenth century, can you find an item or set of items from that event, e.g. a news article, a photograph? Use your object as an interpretive focal point and as a way to think about a larger set of issues to which it speaks. 

You will present your Creative Curation as part of a website we are creating together. You will need at least one visual element in your project, and you are free (and even encouraged) to play around with forms of presentation alongside writing (images, video, audio, digital storytelling, mixed media approaches). Aim to produce the equivalent of at least five written pages of content. This is an opportunity to transform the usual research essay into a form of public multimodal writing.

Some Guidelines

What To Work On:

• Guidelines: It must be Victorian, which means 1830s to about 1901 and British (loosely conceived, so anything that fits into the reach of the “British Empire” could work). It must be something that you can connect to the idea of Sensation, in any of the term’s expansive and multiple meanings. It must be something you can research within the time permitted and with the resources you have here at NC State, nearby, or online.
  
• I have provided a list of inspiration as part of this assignment, but you should consider this to be just that—inspirational rather than prescriptive. If you are interested in a particular issue, topic, or idea, come talk to me and perhaps I can give you some more inspiration. Do some digging online (see resources I’ve provided) or in the library.
  
• While you can use existing projects as inspiration for your own, do not replicate the work another student has done. Try to pick a different or related topic. If you are committed to working on the same topic another student has previously done, you must make sure you are not replicating content or ideas. Take a different approach. Explore a different aspect of the topic. Where applicable, cite/link to the previous project so you are creating cross-references. Do not plagiarize another students’ work.
  
• Once you have figured out what you are interested in working on, narrow it down. The best projects will be those focused on something specific rather than something broad. This is why I encourage you to think about your object. For instance, don’t try to present on a huge exhibit or museum in London; focus on a particular item or set of items in that exhibit. Instead of representing the Boer War or the Irish Famine, pick a particular representation of the war (a photograph or set of photographs? A news article?). Instead of trying to account for the popularity of Charles Dickens, focus on public response to a particular text or to one of his readings, or perhaps pick a letter or article he wrote about a social issue. Finding a particular document, image, or other text can be very useful in focusing your attention (and the attention of your reader). You can use that object as your interpretive focal point and as a way to think about a larger set of issues.
  
• Where to look? Begin with some online research or with a book in the library related to a topic that interests you. You might look at general texts on the Victorian period or at some of the general information web resources listed here and here.

Guidelines for Content (i.e. What am I doing?!)

CURATE – Demonstrate intensive attention to and care for your object. 

PRESENT – Inform your audience about your chosen object/event. Bring it to life for us. 

INTERPRET: Illuminate your object’s significance within its cultural context(s), either by transforming your object by giving us your interpretation of it, or by translating the interpretive work you see this sensational object doing in relation to its context(s). 

Rationale (i.e. Why am I doing this?!)

In a literature classroom we think critically and creatively about our objects of study. This project is designed to give you the formal flexibility to do this work by doing the following:

• Close Read – Get your hands dirty with your object of study. Read it obsessively. Pay attention to all of its details and nuances.
• Connect – To curate your object means to get close to it, connect with it, be affected by it; find its relevance (for you, for the Victorians, for today’s world).
• Critique – Look differently; push back; be a little paranoid; refuse to take texts/cultural artifacts for granted; locate the text’s own acts of critique.
• Create – Do something with a text/cultural artifact. Re-imagine it. Transform it. Produce something new.
• Claim – Own your ideas; make points and back them up with evidence; take a position; offer your take on its meaning(s); illuminate it for us.

Practicalities of Content:

• We will be collecting all our projects together on a this website. You can either post your content directly onto the website as a post or, if you prefer, you can link to or embed your content from elsewhere on the web (e.g. your own website—there are plenty of tools for creating these; an audio file; a video; a podcast, etc.). Either way, you should have something to post or link to on our project site.
  
• You should aim to produce the equivalent of at least 5 written pages of work, though you are free to play around with other forms of presentation in place of, or alongside, writing (including movies, audio files, and other forms of mixed media presentation). You can organize and present however you see fit. Please do not see this as a formal minimum length requirement, but rather as a starting point for the minimum amount of product you should consider for your product.
  
• You should have some kind of visual element to your project. At least ONE image needs to accompany your post on this website, even if your content itself is hosted elsewhere, so that there is a visual for the front page menu. Since this is an online project, you want to be visually engaging! Make sure that, if you post an image from elsewhere on the web, you fully cite who created it and where you found it. We need to be careful to abide by fair use guidelines (see https://copyright.columbia.edu/basics/fair-use.html for more information).

A Very Important Note on Plagiarism and Citation

Even though this is a creative project, you still need to give proper citation of any ideas or content you find elsewhere. Please review the note on the syllabus about academic honesty and plagiarism. Your project should be original content. Plagiarism of any kind will result in failure of the assignment and reporting to the Office of Student Conduct. If in doubt about whether something is plagiarism, ask me. Remember that plagiarism isn’t just reproducing someone else’s language and presenting it as your own; it also includes taking someone else’s ideas and representing them as your own. You can include a works cited list, embed URLs, or find other ways to make clear where you got your ideas, but you must make the sources of your research clear to your reader/audience.

Dates and Deadlines (ENG 453, Fall 2022)

8/24 Hand out assignment

9/7 By this time you should have picked your topic and begun your research. In class you will write a paragraph explaining what you will be working on. I will ask you to include the email address you want to use for the wordpress site and a username you want to use (this can be your name or a pseudonym, if you prefer to remain anonymous).

9/21 We will have an in-class works session for your Creative Curation projects for part of today’s class. This is a great chance to seek inspiration from other class members, to ask me questions, and to continue your research. Please try to bring a laptop or tablet to this class.

10/4 Complete draft of project due online. To receive credit for this project you MUST have your project online by this date in a way that is accessible to other students. This is not a “rough draft” or a “partial draft,” but a full project. (Extension from original 9/30 deadline.)

10/12 Peer feedback on Creative Curation project due (bring TWO copies to class)

10/24 Final edits to Creative Curation project, based on peer feedback, must be completed by this day. Self-reflections also due today.

How I Grade Your Work

Your grade will reflect the labor you put into your project. Different students have different strengths, and this assignment gives you the flexibility to play to those strengths. You can demonstrate care and work in different ways: through your writing, your presentation, the depth of your focus, and/or the amount of time you spent developing your project. You can demonstrate your own interpretation of your chosen object by helping us to see it in a new way, whether that is by offering an academic argument about it, creatively responding to it, or otherwise shedding light on its significance.

As part of your assignment, I will ask you to turn in a self-reflection in which you consider how you curated, worked with, and interpreted your object.

In general, you can use the following rubric to help you understand how I assess your work:

A: Your Creative Curation demonstrates that you cared deeply. It shows extraordinary work in research and writing. It is creatively, meticulously presented. You have carefully selected and focused, illuminated your chosen object/event for your reader/audience, and interpreted it for your audience in ways that are convincing, enlightening, and intriguing.

B: Your Creative Curation demonstrates that you cared. It shows evidence of hard work in research and writing. It shows some creativity and solid presentation. You have done good work in selecting, focusing, illuminating, and interpreting your object/event. You produced something that fulfilled the requirements of the assignment well.

C. Your Creative Curation shows that you worked and you cared, if not quite as much as you could have done. You produced something that fulfilled the basic requirements of the assignment.

D. Your Creative Curation shows evidence of some work toward fulfilling the requirements of the assignment, but not enough to produce strong work. You didn’t show that you cared very much for your object or your task.

F. A failure of caring and work. You haven’t fulfilled the requirements of the assignment.

Peer Feedback

You will be responsible for reading/viewing/experiencing two of your peers’ projects (I will assign these). Please be generous and respectful but critical and helpful in your feedback. Try to identify the elements of the project that are working well and those that would benefit from improvement. Feel free to directly address the person you are writing to—there’s no need to use stiff “academic” prose. Write at least the equivalent of a page of feedback to each of your peers. You might consider some of the following:

• Does the project meet the requirements of the assignment as outlined in this document?
• Does the project show care?
• Do you think there is enough of a focus on an object or element? If not, can you suggest ways to add specificity?
• Is the writing or other medium of communication clear and effective? Is it well organized and presented?
• Does the project clearly interpret rather than merely describe? If not, can you offer suggestions for improvement?
• Does the project seem creative, engaging, intriguing?
• Are all sources appropriately incorporated and cited, including any use of images?

You should bring two copies of your feedback to class on 10/12 or email it to your peer and copy me if you are not able to be in class that day.

Reflection

When you turn in your final project, you will accompany it with a 1-2 page written reflection (submitted on Moodle) in which you write about your process and product. In this personal reflection, you should consider the following:

• How have you demonstrated care for (curation of) your object?
• How did you make decisions about presentation? What sort of priorities did you have for organizing and designing your project?
• How did you ensure you were thoughtfully interpreting, illuminating, and translating (rather than merely describing) your object?
• How did you work on this project? Reflect on the labor you put into this assignment. How do you think that labor relates to the grading rubric (see above)?

Flash Presentation

Early in the semester you will sign up for a date on which you will offer a VERY brief presentation to the class on your sensational object. Here are the guidelines for your presentation:

• No more than 5 minutes! This is a strict time limit (I will have a timer!); your goal is to keep it brief, succinct, and interesting! There’s no minimum time limit, so if you can interest and inform us in 2 minutes, that’s great! 
• Have a visual aid? No more than 3 slides! And try to keep those slides visual rather than text based. Slides should be there to illustrate the content of your presentation. Give us something to look at while you talk to us, but don’t distract us from what you have to say by making us read while we listen. The strongest visual aids are just that: visual aids! Any slides must be emailed to me (annagibson@ncsu.edu) no later than 11AM on the morning of your presentation. 
• Interest and inform us! Your goal is to intrigue and engage your audience, to make us want to learn more. Your object is sensational, so let it make a sensation! Help us understand your approach to the object.

[1] Thanks to both Nathan K. Hensley (Georgetown) and Jim Knowles (NC State) for the “curation” inspiration. For more on Curatorial Reading, see Hensley’s article “Curatorial Reading and Endless War” in Victorian Studies (56.1, 2013).