Description
For the Final Project, you must produce a creative project involving performance — meaning, I would like you to perform something and capture your performance in either an audio recording or a video recording. And your performance must pertain to the themes of this course and reference AT LEAST TWO READINGS FROM TWO DIFFERENT MODULES. Your audio or video recording must be NO LONGER than five minutes long. Then, you will ALSO write a 2-page, double-spaced paper in which you EXPLAIN how your project relates to some of the themes of the course, and what two readings you used.
Why does your Final Project have to be a performance? Since this is a performance studies class, and if I taught it in a physical classroom, I would make you perform at least once in front of your peers, I think it would be great to still ask you to perform even though were doing this course online. So, for your Final Project, you could choose to write out an essay about your thoughts on a television show or social media account, relating it to some of the themes youve learned in this course, and you could record yourself reading your essay. Whatever genre and style of performance you choose, I advise that you choose something from television or something from social media, like a TV series, or an episode or character from that series, or a social media event, or account, or hashtag campaign, as your main object. Then you should do an explanation or commentary or reaction or parody or re-enactment or artistic re-interpretation of that TV or social media object that references themes from this course. Whatever type of recording you do, you just have to make sure its maximum 5 minutes long. It can be a lot shorter than 5 minutes, it just cant be longer than 5 minutes.
Now, and this is really important: you also have to make sure that somewhere in your project, you mention two readings from two DIFFERENT modules of the course. So, for example, you could cite one reading from Module 7, which focuses on Asian Americans, and one reading from Module 2, which focuses on Performance and Social Media. Or, you could cite one reading from Module 5, on Native Americans, and one reading from Module 3, on Gender and Sexuality. When I say that you have to mention two readings, that means that you have to quote from the readings and make use of their concepts, but you dont have to necessarily mention the authors or the titles of the readings in your project. You could cite the readings explicitly, but you could also just incorporate themes, concepts, frameworks, terms, keywords, main ideas from the readings, into your project. The reason that you have the option to not cite the two readings explicitly is that, remember, you will also be writing a 2-page paper explaining your project in addition to doing the project itself, and in that paper, you will state very clearly which readings you used for your project — you should write the titles of the two essays you used, their authors, and if you think its necessary or helpful, you should write which arguments, or lines, from the essays informed your project the most.
