Our purpose is to use the available electronic media to create an interesting, helpful and perhaps persuasive resource for reading/interpreting and writing about our main primary texts and our secondary research texts. In doing so, you and your group will aim your work at an audience like yourselves.
A group is two to four people. Please no solos or groups larger than four. Collaboration means more than doling out tasks to individuals. Each group member must play a role in all the other members’ work, at least by reading and critiquing.
Once formed, your group will need to 1) exchange email addresses and phone numbers; 2) discuss the project and collaboratively compose a list of initial tasks; 3) assign tasks 4) elect a taskmaster to check on the project’s progress and schedule meetings as needed 5) meet to work on the project.
On sources: our approach to sources is not radically different for this project than for the bibliographies. “Garbage in=garbage out”
More than one group can do the same topic, provided the groups work out ways not to be redundant.
Possible ideas (not a restrictive list):
A. Compile an annotated bibliography of sources on various researchable topics on Ceremony. Select from your groups’ and the annotated bibliographies of others in the class (by permission). Write brief introductions to each topic and edit and improve the existing annotations. Use the web’s linking abilities to put users in touch with electronically reachable sources. Include an intro to your pages. Use a Add images and otherwise use visual resources to make the site attractive and engaging.
B. Use some research and your own reading to compare and contrast Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven with the film, Smoke Signals (dir. Eyre, 1998). Use articles, reviews (if they deal with how it uses the fiction), interviews with Alexie, Chris Eyre, and the actors, the screenplay (available), and anything else that looks promising. (You will need to screen the film; at least see the rest of it. ) Use web resources on the film, still shots from the movie, You Tube or other video source excerpts, and your own writing. Some points should be made about the comparison/contrast, what is lost/gained, etc. Use the web’s linking abilities to put users in touch with electronically reachable sources. Include an intro to your pages.. Add images and otherwise use visual resources to make the site attractive and engaging.
C. Use a variety of resources to educate readers about American Indian literature, its history and the major critical issues in order to provide a context for reading our two books. Consider creating a timeline with information and links. Maybe deal with Nativism, Postmodernism, gender, colonization, and so on. Use the web’s linking abilities to put users in touch with electronically reachable sources. Include an intro to your pages. Add images and otherwise use visual resources to make the site attractive and engaging.
D. Do some research on topics that inform either of the primary texts and that might help readers get a grasp of some aspects. Possibilities might include Native American and aboriginal concepts of time; storytelling, humor and the oral tradition; historical references (Bataan Death March; Uranium mining; the Ghost Dance movement, river dams that killed off the salmon; Army campaigns against the Spokane area Indians; Custer, etc.), cultural references (myths and stories of Ceremony; Coyote and trickster figures; Indian shamans and black magic; gambling games; powwows and trad. and fancy dancing; The Lone Ranger, Robert Johnson; etc). Provide information on the topics and discuss how they figure in and are significant for understanding the primary texts. Figure out ways to organize the topics and info for easy use. Use the web’s linking abilities to put users in touch with electronically reachable sources. Include an intro to your pages. Use a group blog or google docs. Add images and otherwise use visual resources (video?) to make the site attractive and engaging.
E. Do close readings of a number of Alexie stories or some parts of Ceremony. Use ideas from sources to enrich your interpretations, making some points about how to interpret these stories or segments. Design your site to be a reader’s guide to what you focus on. Use different approaches or organize by themes, topics, and claims. Use the web’s linking abilities to put users in touch with electronically reachable sources. Include an intro to your pages. Use a group blog or google docs. Add images and otherwise use visual resources to make the site attractive and engaging.
F. A rhetorical approach would look at Alexie and/or Silko as public intellectuals and orators involved in persuading audiences as much as it would see them as artists. So a rhetorical approach to their writing might focus on the “rhetorical situation” of their writing, that is: who their audiences are and what they believe and how they feel in the context of events and other material conditions leading up to, during and after the publication of the work. Basically, the author does not just write and get published etc.; their writing, and the reception of it, results from complex transactions between them, their audiences (real and imagined), and the material conditions (which may include the power of hegemonic discourses). This project would look at one or both of these writers from this point of view. Reviews of books are one source, as are their interviews, public orations, and studies of Amer. Indian oratory. Use the web’s linking abilities to put users in touch with electronically reachable sources. Include an intro to your pages. Use a group blog or google docs. Add images and otherwise use visual resources to make the site attractive and engaging.
G. Focusing on either The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven or Ceremony, select, compile and copy into text what you might identify as “key” passages in the text. Write commentaries for each passage, offering close readings, quotes and points from sources, information on references and allusions in the passage, and an explanation of why and how it is a “key” to opening up the text. Figure out a way to organize and arrange the material, perhaps by themes, to make it useful for readers. Use the web’s linking abilities to put users in touch with electronically reachable sources. Include an intro to your pages. Use a group blog or google docs. Add images and otherwise use visual resources to make the site attractive and engaging. Consider linking to useful pages in other group sites.
OR? Propose something . . .
Dates: Groups and topics must be established no later than Thursday, May 21. Post your preferences or proposals to your blog between now and Thursday. We can use class time on TH to iron that out and then get started. Tasks must be identified and assigned to be done by each group member over the weekend. Your group will meet during Tuesday’s class to compile the task work and further compose, arrange, and plan to get the draft completed by Thursday, May 28. We will do some peer critique work on the drafts that day. Revised sites are due Friday, May 29 by 6:00 pm. Your group may need to meet on Friday to complete the project.
Expectations: The projects need to contain writing that your group does for it, in addition to any visual media, links etc. employed. The writing needs to be of good quality, well-edited, and follow MLA citation standards. The project must include a works cited list. The project needs to be useful, interesting, perhaps entertaining, and show thoughtful organization. Consider using a site index to allow readers to go to topics that interest them. Use the interlinking and graphical capacity of the web.
You can use a group blog through blogger, or google docs, or even make a site using Dreamweaver and put it on OAK.
The draft needs to be online in order to get peer responses. I expect more volume from a group of 3-4 than from a two person group.
