Requirements + Assignments

Attendance, Engagement, and Collegiality: 20%
Introductory Slide (January 31): 5%
Reading Response (you choose your date): 15%
Collection Proposal (March 15): 20%
Messing Around with Collection Platforms (April 3): 10%
Final Project: Your Own Collection (May 3): 30%

ATTENDANCE, ENGAGEMENT, AND COLLEGIALITY   

Our class is a mix of lecture, seminar, and workshop, and its success depends on your regular attendance and reliable engagement as a constructive colleague. I strive to create an inclusive, accommodating classroom – one that’s responsive to students’ competing demands, disparate backgrounds, varying styles of learning, and particular access needs, etc. –  that should enable (and, I hope, incentivize!) all of you to attend and engage. 

What does it mean to “attend” and “engage collegially”?

• It means showing up on time to scheduled class, group, and individual meetings;
  • Absences: While I hope you’ll all be able to join us every week, everyone gets four free absences, no questions asked. Again, I simply request that you please notify me of your absence in advance, if you can, via email so I can plan group activities accordingly. Any absences in excess of two will impact your attendance grade. If you miss four or more classes, I’ll advise you to withdraw in order to avoid a failing grade. Please note that absences include missed individual and small group meetings, as well as those days you might miss at the beginning of the semester because of late registration. 
  • Catching Up: If you do need to miss a class, please do your best to catch up via the course documentation on our class website and through your classmates. If these resources prove insufficient, you’re welcome to chat with me during office hours. 
• It means making your best effort to complete the readings, screenings, and exercises in advance of each class session; please see “About the Readings, Screenings, and Listening Exercises” 
• It means doing your best to honor assignment deadlines; please see our Deadline Policy; 
• It means communicating with the instructor about any pedagogical obstacles or personal challenges you’re facing, so we can work collaboratively to design accommodations;
  • Accommodations: While I’m happy to work with you to tailor the class’s content and assignments to your interests, and to help you develop strategies for project planning and time management – and while I aim to be sympathetic to any challenges you might face both inside and outside the classroom – I ask that you please also respect my time and acknowledge my load of responsibilities. I can’t allow expectations for accommodation to compromise my own wellbeing.
• It means being prepared to engage constructively and respectfully with your colleagues. Your contributions during class can take a number of forms, depending upon your strengths and preferences and the day’s varying demands and stresses [I’m indebted here to Max Liboiron]:
  • You could contribute to our in-class discussions, while also monitoring the power of your voice and ensuring that others have room to contribute, too;
  • You could contribute to collaborative note-taking;
  • You could help with timekeeping by marking our progress through the day’s agenda, or by ensuring that student presentations proceed on pace, leaving no one short-shrifted!;
  • You could write the creators of any of the texts or projects we examine this semester to let them know why you appreciate their work (please cc me!);
  • You could offer some form of mutual aid to your classmates or propose another means of building intellectual camaraderie
• It means sharing our commitment to Inclusion and Respect. 

Attendance and engagement account for 20% of your final grade. 

INTRODUCTORY SLIDE 

Described below, under Week 2. These slides should be posted before class starts on January 31, and are an easy way to fulfill 5% of your course obligations 😊

READING RESPONSE

The degree of pre-semester and weekly preparation for this class — combined with my broader workload — won’t afford me sufficient time to review weekly reading responses. Plus, some of our weeks involve other activities that invite you to do the reflective, synthetic thinking that traditional reading responses are intended to inspire. I wouldn’t ask you to do work that won’t be appropriately acknowledged, and that won’t help to shape our class discussions.

So, I invite each of you to share only ONE reading response this semester, on a date you choose. Sign up here. On your selected date, we’ll be counting on you to serve as engaged, inquisitive, generous interlocutors for our guests or hosts 😊

By 12 noon on your chosen date (to give me time to review and synthesize your work before class), I ask that you please visit our collaborative Reading Response Slide Deck to share two or three slides that include the following :

• Your name. 
• A ~200- to 300-word post (1) synopsizing the overarching themes in the readings / screenings / listening exercises for that week; (2) identifying any particular passages, examples, arguments that struck you, inspired you, troubled you, etc.; and (3) offering a potential discussion question that expands upon those resonant passages and provocative ideas. 
• A ~150-word description of an “elastically” relevant concrete example (this means I welcome productive tangents!) that reflects your own unique interests and experiences. How did the readings make you think differently about something with which you have direct experience, or something that’s long fascinated you? 
  • Perhaps exploring The Library Company’s legacy has prompted you to learn more about a particular aspect of Philadelphia history? Maybe our visit to the conservation lab has prompted you to consider all the behind-the-scenes labor required to make digital resources available? Maybe reading about picture collections has made you reflect on the role of family photos in tracing your own diasporic identity? 
  • This segment of the response is intended to allow you to share what you alone know!

I encourage you to be creative and have fun. Feel free to incorporate photos, sketches, videos, links to audio files, etc. if you like. 

Why a slide deck? First, because the “pitch deck” is a common form, used across myriad fields of study and practice and a wide range of industries; we can co-opt and creatively re-interpret it. Second, because the constraints of the format not only require concision — they compel us to distill and crystallize — but they can also prove generative: as most artists and designers know, formal limitations create boundaries we can push against. You’re welcome to experiment with the form, if you like! Third, and relatedly, the slide format allows you to incorporate multiple media forms — to design your contribution — if you so choose. You’ll find some examples of inventive/subversive uses of slide decks on this Arena channel. 

Your reading response accounts for 15% of your final grade. 

COLLECTION PROPOSAL

After reviewing the guidelines for your final assignment, below, I invite you to draft a preliminary proposal, which will serve a number of purposes: (1) it’ll help you clarify your interests and guide your work for the remainder of the semester; (2) it’ll give me an opportunity to offer feedback and recommend resources that can clarify and ease your path; and, (3), by workshopping our proposals in class,  it’ll give your classmates a chance to share resources and support — and perhaps to become collaborative partners. 

In  900 words or fewer (including citations), please outline: 

• The specific topic, theme, object, issue, etc., that will unify your collection. If your chosen focus isn’t obviously media-centered, explain how your project will still allow you to address issues pertinent to media studies. For example, if you want to focus on collectible sneakers, address how footwear can serve as cultural symbols and personal signals — and how shoes are represented in myriad media campaigns.  
• What broader critical questions, cultural concerns, or social issues your specific topical focus will allow you to examine. For example: Does the vinyl record album offer a means of studying racialized subcultures? Does a specific genre of meme offer a lens into a niche political culture?  
• A tentative list of the various formats of media artifacts that will allow you to explore your topic. Think broadly! Material artifacts? Digital images? Audio? Video? Animation? 
• A tentative plan for the format in which you’d like to display / share your collection. I offer a few options in the Final Project description, below — but I encourage you to choose a format that best fits your collection materials, your ideal “audience,” and your intellectual and creative goals! Say a bit about why this format suits you.
• A list of three to five existing collections — analog and digital — that pertain directly or tangentially to your focus. If you’re examining zines, where have you found zine libraries or zine-related exhibits that temporarily gather together diverse collections? 
• A list of at least five scholarly sources that pertain to your specific topical focus and the broader critical issues it allows you to example; plus any additional credible, non-academic resources that pertain to your specific material topic. Feel free to use whatever citation style is most common in your field.

Your proposal is due, via Google Docs, by Friday, March 15, at the end of the day (although, technically, you can take until Saturday, if you want, since I won’t start reviewing work until Sunday), and is worth 20% of your final grade.

MESSING AROUND WITH COLLECTION PLATFORMS 

You’re invited to identify a favorite, idiosyncratic, provocative, wondrous collection; analyze what makes it work; and share it with the class. You’ll find instructions below, under Week 10 / April 1 and 3.

If you need to miss class, I ask that you share your “show and tell” via a five-minute video (which you can record via Zoom, Loom, etc). 

This project is due before class on April 3 and is worth 10% of your final grade. 

FINAL PROJECT: CURATE YOUR OWN HIGHLY (PERHAPS WEIRDLY) SPECIFIC, INTERDISCIPLINARY, CROSS-MEDIUM COLLECTION  

Drawing inspiration from Rachel Foullon’s contribution, “A Collection and a Means for Its Display,” to a now-classic collection of artists’ and curators’ favorite art assignments — Paper Monument’s Draw It With Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment (2012) — I invite each of you to curate your own collection “and a means for its display.” As Foullon notes, “The most impenetrable subjects in art school… are how to (1) be truly and weirdly yourself, and (2) successfully convey that through objects and/or actions.” Now, I realize that most of you are not in art school, and that you have obligations to your field or discipline, that you need to prepare yourself for employment and please your parents and pursue projects that have both personal and social purpose. This project, I hope, can be an opportunity to work at the intersection of these varying demands: what the world and your field needs or demands, and what you love.

I’m reluctant to be too prescriptive; I’d rather have you choose a format that suits your intellectual and creative purposes. Your collection could take the form of a curated, annotated digital exhibition; a scrapbook or artists’ book; a stylized index, like Mindy Seu’s; a virtual reality environment showing objects in-situ; a desktop cinema piece wherein you tour us through your collection; a shadow box or diorama populated with miniature objects; etc. 

The only requirements are that: 

• You include at least 20 pieces in your collection
• Those pieces encompass a variety of media formats — ideally three or more
• You incorporate some substantial critical commentary and conceptual framing. What’s your argument? What can we learn through your objects and artifacts? This commentary could be incorporated via museum wall texts, an audio tour, a website introduction, etc. And somewhere, perhaps in a less prominent place, we need to see your sources, too: what scholars, critics, precedent exhibitions, parallel collections, etc., have shaped the discourse around your topic and informed your thinking? Please provide full citations. 
• You provide captions (perhaps in the form of a customized metadata scheme!) and citations for each item in your collection. We need to know how each object contributes to the overall assemblage, and what people and institutions deserve credit for creating and stewarding those objects. This is an opportunity to think creatively about credit: Who designed it? Who manufactured it? Who deemed it worthy of attention? Who provides a hospitable climate for its storage and preservation? Who else sustains the collections that feed your collection? 

Your collection is due via this Google Form by Friday, May 3, at 5pm, and is worth 30% of your grade.

A NOTE FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS

“Collecting Media” is a hybrid undergraduate/graduate class. Rather than designing different assignments for our graduate students colleagues, I invite you simply to expand your weekly explorations and “scale up” your individual assignments. Choose at least one of the “Supplemental Resources” to read each week! Add 100 words to your Reading Response, 300 words to your Collection Proposal, and five items to your final project.