Readings, Class Participation, and Class Discussion:
Participants are expected to have completed the assigned readings prior to each class and be prepared to engage in class discussion. This is extremely important for the success of the course and readings have been kept to a minimum level to ensure that you have time to read everything and read it well.
Reading Annotations. 20%
Every week a one to two page annotation discussing the week’s readings is required. These informal annotations should include the following:
- Summary of your thoughts on the readings. No longer than a paragraph (like 200 words or so)
- Transcription of key quotes (interesting, problematic, etc.)
- Series of questions for discussion.
- Bring two copies (keep one for yourself and leave one with me).
The summary can take many different forms. It can engage with one idea or try to offer an overview of the argument(s) in the readings. One approach to this is to imagine yourself in the role of a book reviewer attending to a general but scholarly audience.
You should be ready to read your summary in class, elaborate on observations and comments, and engage in collective discussions and critiques. I see my role as a kind of conductor/participant of this seminar. Everyone brings a particular expertise to the table and you will be encouraged to embrace that. So this seminar can be seen as a workshop where we explore a variety of ideas and concepts as a collective.
Anthropocene Diary. 10%
This weekly assignment is another informal but regular bit of writing. Bring to class and be prepared to read between 200 and 500 words.
Participation. 30%
You should be prepared with comments, critiques, and questions in direct response and reference to the readings for each class. Regular attendance is expected of all students.
Critical Making Project. 40%
- Make a thing (almost any thing but a conventional research paper). You could produce a fifteen minute podcast, develop a website, build an arduino powered environmental air quality station, make a collection of twigs from hikes around Ithaca, gather headlines about mushrooms from the media, compose an experimental sound work. This can be an individual or group project.
- Work on it, report on it, write on it, present it.
- Work on it: you will be required to work on the thing in your own time.
- Report on it: you will be expected to talk regularly about your thing in class. What you talk about and how you talk about it should change (dare I say advance) through the semester.
- Write on it: you will be required to write a ten page companion work to your thing. This will be a polished bit of writing that connects your thing to ideas connected to and developed in this class.
- Present on it: you will informally present your thing to the class on the last day (December 3).
The goal of this assignment is to defamiliarize your thinking process through an object-led exploration. Matt Ratto writes that his term critical making “signals a desire to theoretically and pragmatically connect two modes of engagement with the world that are often held separate—critical thinking, typically understood as conceptually and linguistically based, and physical “making,” goal-based material work.” (Ratto 2011: 253). I use critical making in my own practice as an anthropologist. It is a playful and engaged way of doing critical research.