Welcome to the Station (in-class activity)

This piece, which I read aloud on the first day of class, is an effort to help students grasp the power of narrative by imagining a transportation hub in which you can go anywhere you want by simply speaking the name of your chosen destination into a magical window. It encourages students to imagine their own version of this station and then introduces the paradox of choice in the Internet age, which has given rise to recommender systems that remove the dilemma of making a choice (and steal autonomy in the process). Many students appreciate this opportunity to listen and imagine, but some have shared that closing their eyes makes it harder to envision what I’m describing. I bring hard copies so students can read along if they want.

In this class, you are going to read literature and you are going to write about your experiences reading. That sounds pretty straightforward, right? I’m willing to bet it will be different than you expect.

To help you understand what we’re going to be doing together this semester, I want you first to get out a sheet of paper and something to write with.

Now, I want you to imagine that the radiator in the corner of our classroom is a secret passage into a room that very few people know about. Imagine that instead of standing in front of you as I am doing on this, our first day of class, I’m walking over to that radiator, pressing a button underneath, and it’s opening (it flips up slowly, like the DeLorean in Back to the Future). Let’s all close our eyes as we imagine ourselves going through this passageway. Closing your eyes can make it easier to imagine the space, but you can also read along if you think that will work better.

As we go through the passage, we enter The Station: a transportation hub filled with people who are about to begin or have just returned from a journey. Natural light fills the space. There are hundreds of windows. Enormous stone arches create a vast airy space in the main vestibule where we’re standing, but there are many levels. The acoustics are calming. There are tons of people, but the sounds of their footsteps and conversations are slightly dampened. We’ll just stand here right in the middle as people plan to depart or weave through fellow travelers to exit. Don’t worry. We’re not bothering anyone. I bring groups in here all the time.

I can tell you all feel a little awkward to be standing here in a clump with me. Some of you are looking at me like “where have you brought us?” I believe in my teacher heart that some of you are reservedly excited.

I’ve always struggled to put into words exactly how it feels to be in this space. It’s all of the things I love about train stations and airports: loads of people traveling here and there. But then also it’s none of the things that make those places annoying. No people running down a sweltering platform to catch the final train of the night. No loud screeching of brakes and wheels on rails, no airport security to go through, no “paging John Smith, your plane is boarding.”

The first time I came here, I couldn’t figure out how it could be so busy and so calm at the same time. I assumed that when one is in any kind of transportation hub, at least some people will be in a hurry to get to the appropriate departure gate on time. But that’s not happening here. Look around…nobody is in a hurry. People are chatting, reading books, someone over in the corner there is sketching in a notebook. How is everyone so relaxed?

I’ll tell you. It is because there are no departure gates here.

At The Station you can leave for a destination the second you decide where you want to go. If you look right over here, there’s someone departing right now. That’s Toby. He’s here all the time.

Come closer so you can all see…he’s decided where he’s going, so he’s walking up to one of the windows on the first level.

Seriously, it’s okay for you to watch. He doesn’t care.

Did you hear what he said? He whispered it so you might not have caught it. He said, “Villette.” See how there’s this faint etching of words appearing on the glass? That’s going to fade in just a moment as he…ah, he did it. He went to touch the etched glass and his hand went through it. He just climbed right through the window. No, I don’t think he’s scared…he’s done this before.

Yeah, that’s right. He’s gone now. Not just, like, outside the window. He’s on a journey to Villette.

Now the glass is glass again. See? (tap tap tap). You can tap it too if you want.

Oh, and if you look quickly across the station in that back corner you can see a whole family leaping together through a window! You can absolutely go on a journey with other people.

It’s important to me that you understand that The Station is filled with all the excitement and anticipation of travel and none of the frustration that goes along with getting to your destination. But I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could help you experience the wonder of unchecked possibility. Because I bet it sounds to you like make-believe.

Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it according to your own taste, assuming you have interests that you can supply to help you imagine this magical place. I know I can’t please you all.

Let’s try again to imagine The Station. To me, it is a lot like Grand Central Station (huge, vaulted ceiling, very calming), but now I want you to imagine a building that you find wonderful. Maybe it’s a building you hope to visit someday that you’ve only ever seen in a film. Maybe it’s a building from your past that is special to you. It could be a house—or even a special room inside a house. Take that space and transform it into a station in your imagination. There’s certainly a notable sound experience. I’m partial to the dampened acoustics of Grand Central, but maybe you imagine music. What are the smells? Is it the smell of a particular kind of food? The temperature should be perfect, whatever that means to you. I used a window, but what will you use as a portal? Remember, through the station you have imagined, you can go anywhere you want.

Now that you’ve got a good grasp on this feeling of possibility, I have a question for you. Do you know where you want to go? What are you going to say when you approach a window? Not to freak you out or anything, but for this class, you’ll be needing to depart on your first journey in a couple of weeks.

Maybe you’ve got an idea already. If so, excellent. But if you’re anything like me, the enormity of unchecked possibility can make it sort of hard to decide. You might have heard this referred to as “the paradox of choice.” When everything is an option, it’s almost impossible to remember the places you’ve wanted to visit in the past. And this doesn’t even account for the overwhelming feeling that there’s some perfect destination that you don’t even know about yet. Trust me, I get it. And I’ll just mention (because I think it will put your mind somewhat at ease) you can go on as many journeys as you want.

But for now, I want to invite you to think once more about the station you have imagined. And as soon as you’re done looking around in this space, I want you to open your eyes and write down exactly what you imagined, with as much detail as possible. I’ll give you some time to do this and then we’ll discuss.

Preparation and Participation

I think class discussion is one of the most important elements of this course and it works best if we all come prepared. You should prepare for each class by selecting something specific you want to bring into the discussion (this might be something you’ve read or something you’ve written, depending on the moment in the semester). Before the start of class, I’ll ask each of you to add things you want to discuss to Our Doc (a shared Word Online document). As we begin discussion, I’ll ask you to put devices away and get out your notebooks. I will do my best on the class computer to pull up texts, passages, and random things that come up as the discussion happens. I’ll also give you time at the end of class to compose a discussion reflection on our course website. You should use this as an opportunity to share what you took away from the discussion, whether you voiced your ideas during class or not. Your goal is to write quickly and informally to capture emerging ideas. By the end of the allotted time (or a bit after class if you need more time), I will ask you to publish your post or keep it private (I’ll be able to see it either way). In the gradebook, I will give you a completion grade for your preparation work (added to Our Doc) and for your participation work (entered as a discussion reflection).

Getting Started (Assignment #1)

For most of this course, you will be reading stories you’ve never read before. But we’re not doing that quite yet. As we get started, you’re going to select a story that you’ve already read (or watched or played)–one that prompted a memorable experience. Making such a selection can seem a bit daunting. Maybe you’re not in the habit of reading these days or maybe you don’t think the stories you consume are worth mentioning in a “literature” class. Trust me, this process will work with any story (a novel, film, album, videogame, etc). This is because all stories (from Star Wars to Beowulf and from Hamlet to Bridgerton) are fundamentally tools that do work on our brains. These tools are crafted by artisans (authors, content creators, stand-up comics, songwriters, video game developers, etc.) who draw on an ever-expanding set of narrative technologies as they create. Literature scholars like to argue about which stories are superior (this is why we have a literary canon), but if it has a character doing something, it’s a story.

In other words, be honest about what you like! Your semester will be most enjoyable if you use this first assignment to explore something you have genuinely enjoyed. Once you’ve put a name to the experiences you’ve had with stories in the past, you can find more stories that have provoked similar experiences in others. If it’s hard to pick just one story, you can go through this process for two or three different stories. The more you explore in this assignment, the more you’ll discover about your preferences (and remember, that’s the point of this assignment).

Once you’ve decided on the story you’ll explore in this assignment, make sure you have access to it. It’s often been the case that students don’t have a copy of the book they read five years ago or don’t have the right setup to play a specific video game on campus. Talk to your professor and your library if this is the case. Within the two weeks you’ll spend on this assignment, there should be time to track it down. You can also change your choice if it turns out you can’t access the story. You will need to be able to quote from it to meet the requirements for this assignment.

Our goal is to isolate specific story experiences and then try to figure out which specific features of the story prompted those experiences. Once we’ve isolated the features of the story, we’ll try to figure out the narrative technology the author used to create those features. We’ll do this step by step and you’ll submit a piece of writing that shows your thought process. This means that you are not (for this or any other assignment this semester) going to be asked to produce a traditional “English paper” (clear thesis statement supported with evidence from the text). Instead, you are going to describe, explore, and chronicle your process figuring out how you think one or more stories work. You might feel an urge to find out if others have already figured it out and it’s fine to do this (though definitely not required). It’s unlikely you’ll figure everything out, and that’s okay. If you do find a source that offers an explanation (like an article or a blog post), make sure to cite it!

Describe your Experience

Describe how you came to experience the story you’ve chosen and what you remember about the experience. If possible, include who or what introduced you to the story. Try to remember the year or even the specific time of year. Most importantly, try to put into words the emotions you experienced when you encountered the story.

Classify Your Experience

Now that you’ve described your experience, you’re going to consider whether others have had that same experience with a story. This might be a little challenging because it’s not what we typically do with literature in a classroom. You might be expecting to interpret literature in a course like this, perhaps using class discussion to debate the meaning of Frankenstein’s relationship with the monster he created in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

But with this assignment, I’m not asking you to find out if someone has interpreted the story you’ve chosen in the same way you have. Instead, I’m asking you to determine if others have had a similar experience with any work of literature. You can see in the example experiences below that an experience is different than an interpretation (and wildly different works of literature can prompt similar experiences):

You can peruse the full list of experiences we’ve classified so far in the Experiences Glossary.

Instead of interpreting, we’re going to use a scientific method similar to what biologists use when they work from observations in the field toward taxonomic classification of species. If they observe an organism that hasn’t already been classified, they get to name a new species (after conferring with other scientists, of course). But they might find that what they’ve observed is not a new species (it’s actually just a funny-looking zebra). We’ll discuss new experiences as a class, helping you determine if you’ve actually had a new experience or found a funny-looking zebra. If the experience you had isn’t in the list above, you can give it a name and, if you want, propose it for inclusion in WonderCat so it can be represented in our list of experiences going forward.

Describe the Features Prompting your Experience

Here’s where it becomes important to have access to the story as you do this assignment. Return to the story and try to determine what exactly it was that shaped your experience. Was it some aspect of the plot? Was it the way the narrator told the story? Was it a surprising character? Was it some aspect of the world the author created? It might be a combination of features, so include everything! If it’s specific language from the story, include direct quotation in this section. If it is something that can’t be quoted (some aspect of the plot or some feel of the storyworld, for example), put it into your own words with as much detail as possible. Here are examples of direction quotation and paraphrase:

Direct quotation from Frankenstein:

“My rage returned: I remembered that I was for ever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow…I only wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind, and perish in the attempt to destroy them.”

Paraphrase from Frankenstein:

The story is presented from a variety of narrative perspectives: the explorer, Dr. Frankenstein, and his monster.

Try to Determine the Narrative Technology That Created the Feature

As you try to figure out which features of the story prompted your experience, try also to imagine the narrative technology the author used to create those features. I say imagine because that’s exactly how this sort of analysis works. You probably can’t know exactly what the author(s) did or why they did it (even if they explain it in an interview!) so the trick is to remember that this thing you experienced was created deliberately by someone (or, more likely, a team of people). These people created the storyworld, made choices about the plot, decided to narrate the story in a particular way (this involves specific camera angles if you’re looking at film or video games), and crafted characters. There might have been discussions (even arguments) between authors and editors, screenwriters and directors, or game designers and graphics editors. What set of decisions do you think prompted your experience and who is most likely responsible for it? Below, I describe the four basic elements of narrative (you can click to look at narrative technologies in each category)

Narration

All of the choices about how the story is told. Sometimes the narrator is a character in the story, sometimes not. When you’re looking at a film or video game, narration involves the camera angles, music, and voiceover narration. Our narrative technologies glossary includes some narration technologies to consider, though there are many more. If you identify one that is not there, you can propose it as a new term!

Storyworld

The fictional world in which the story takes place. Even if the story is nonfiction, the world the narrator creates to tell it is best understood as a representation of the real world. Our narrative technologies glossary includes some storyworld technologies, though there are many more. If you identify one that is not there, you can propose it as a new term!

Plot

The plot is what actually happens in the story, though the narrator may present it out of order, through a variety of perspectives, or in some other non-linear telling. Our narrative technologies glossary includes some plot technologies to consider, though there are many more. If you identify one that is not there, you can propose it as a new term!

Character

This is pretty straightforward. These are the characters doing things in the story. Our narrative technologies glossary includes some character technologies to consider, though there are many more. If you identify one that is not there, you can propose it as a new term!

Once you’ve done your best to identify the technology that prompted your experience, you’re done! Each Story-Experience-Feature-Technology linkage is one unit. This assignment requires you to identify at least one unit, but you can repeat this process for however many distinct experiences you had with a story. You can also repeat this process for however many stories you want to explore in this assignment (I’d suggest no more than three). You can organize your post according to the steps outlined above, as I’ve done in my example post, or you can write a post that includes all that information but presents it in a way that you think will be more compelling to your classmates. You have the option to share your post with your classmates or keep it private so I’m the only one who sees it.

To Sum Up

Part 1: Draft your post on course website

• Describe your experiences
• Classify your experiences
• Describe the features prompting your experiences
• Try to determine the narrative technologies used to create the features you describe

Part 2: Revise your post, making sure it includes

• Any sources clearly cited (hyperlinks for online sources and in-text citations for print sources) with a list of works cited at the end.
• Title
• Featured Image (usually an image associated with the story you’re writing about)
• Complete media file details for featured image and any other images included in post.
  • “caption” field should include an attribution statement (TASL guidance here)
  • “alternative text” field should provide a summary of what is in the image
  • “description” field should include the URL for the image file you downloaded

FAQs

• Do I have to share my post with the class? You can choose to share your post with classmates or share it only with me (set your post to private if you only want me to see it).
• Should I choose something short so I can finish reading in time? You don’t need to finish reading the text you select in order to complete this assignment. You can also keep reading after you’ve turned this assignment in if you are so inclined.
• Should I do research on what I’m reading? Only if you want to. You can process your reading experience without looking at what others have said about the text, but some students like getting the perspective of others. If you do look at secondary sources, please mention this in your reading experience section (even if you don’t wind up citing the sources)
• So, this isn’t a typical “English paper”? No, it isn’t. There is no requirement to have a single argument or claim. You are not required to find peer-reviewed sources to support or contextualize what you want to say. There is no requirement to be original. I want you to let your interests guide you and share your experiences, questions, and theories with me (and your classmates!).
• Can you share an example of what a finished product is supposed to look like? Yes! You can check out this page to see a variety of posts written in response to this assignment prompt.
• How will you grade this? This assignment is graded on a pass/fail basis. If you engage with the task and turn in a project, you will get 100%. This sort of project is likely new to you, so things will be confusing! Do your best and I will give you feedback so you understand the expectations going forward.

Classifying Experiences and Technologies (responding to feedback on Assignment #1)

After you submit your post, I will read it and prepare feedback for you. This won’t be the kind of feedback where I tell you if what you’ve done is right or wrong (these are your experiences, after all). Instead, my feedback will help you brainstorm the best language to describe your experience, get more specific about the features you observed, and explore if the narrative technologies you’ve identified already exist in WonderCat. I will do this by reading your post aloud, responding to your ideas and asking questions about your experiences and the specific features you mention. I want you to think of this video as me continuing the conversation you started by writing your post. With this assignment, I’m asking you to continue the conversation by responding to my feedback and making classification decisions for the experiences and technologies mentioned in your post.

Please create a word document responding to my feedback with your own commentary, questions, and final classification decisions. You can use this document as a template if you would like. Upload that document to Canvas by the deadline. This assignment is graded pass/fail. If you engage with the task, respond to my feedback, and make final classification decisions by the deadline, you will get 100%.

Introducing WonderCat

So, now you’ve done assignment one. You’ve described the emotional experiences prompted by a story that has been meaningful in your life. Maybe you’ve identified specific narrative technologies that prompted your experiences. Good work. Now it’s time to go back to The Station. Before we go back, though, let’s think a little about our first visit to The Station. Because that was a story.

I created The Station to function as a metaphor. I wanted you to feel a sense of wonder as I described a magical place that could take you on a journey anywhere without buying a ticket, going through security, or waiting at a departure gate. In this metaphor I created, I took the act of experiencing a story and stretched it into an actual journey. I’m not the first person to do this, and most people respond to The Station by telling me that it reminded them of platform 9 ¾ in Harry Potter or another fantastical story in which characters could teleport to another place with relative ease. In my version, whispering the name of the place you want to go into a window is like saying the name of the story you want to experience, whether that’s opening up a book and reading the first line, pressing play to start a film, or sitting in a theater as the lights dim and the actors emerge onto the stage.

But like all metaphors, mine glosses over some of the realities. It is true that the Internet makes it possible for you to access a digital version of almost any book in the world in a matter of seconds. But not everyone knows that this is possible (you often don’t even have to go to the library to access their books!). And of course, not everyone has access to the Internet. Accessing a book is slightly more challenging than walking up to a window and whispering a destination, but I still marvel at the magic of libraries. They may not have everything, but they can get almost anything if you ask.

In addition to this feeling of wonder, I also wanted you to feel a bit of the inevitable anxiety that emerges when your options are so open. Humans have not always had near-immediate access to so many stories. In the earliest universities, only the professor (then called a master) had access to the texts he was teaching. A significant part of teaching in the medieval period involved making a text available so students could create a copy, complete with notes on the relevant contexts that they could also only learn directly from the master. But you don’t need to be in a university to access literature now, nor do you need a master to tell you the historical context necessary to make sense of unfamiliar texts. You can read anything, watch anything, play anything. The options are endless! And that is delightful. But also overwhelming. This class is meant to help you make the most of your near-infinite access to literature. And so, let’s go back to The Station to think through this metaphorically. Please get out a sheet of paper. Close those eyes or read along. Let’s go back through the radiator.

I want us to visit The Station again to explore a shop designed to help you find new places to visit. I think you’re going to love it. Remember, you should be imagining The Station you created when we first visited.

Oh, I do want to answer one question you might’ve had when we last visited because I get this question a lot. If you step through one of the magical windows to leave for your journey, how do you return? The answer is…

Giant Bank Tubes.

That’s right, those clear pneumatic tubes that take the little canister from your car into the bank and then from the bank back to your car. You’ll return from your journey in an enormous one of those. It doesn’t take long at all, and each tube lands gently in the center of the station, after which the traveler just opens the door and steps out. Another common question: when can you come back? You can come back anytime you want.

The shop is just over here in the corner. If you were just passing by, you’d probably think it was a typical airport bookstore. One way you can tell that it’s different is that there’s no checkout register (because there’s nothing for sale here). You might notice that there are people with navy blue aprons helping guests and working at typewriters positioned near each cabinet. These are Wonder Cataloguers and their job is to help you decide where you want to go. Right over there, for example, that little girl is asking the tall gentleman with the silver hair—his name is Philippe—a question. I didn’t hear what she said, but he’s taking her across the room to find something. You might notice now that the shop is not actually filled with bookshelves. Instead, the space is filled with card catalog cabinets—the kind that used to help people find books in libraries. They’re not used much these days (library holdings are mostly organized digitally), which makes it even more exciting to be surrounded by them here (I mean, for me. I love old things).

Each of the little drawers has a brass-bordered label indicating which cards are arranged alphabetically inside: “Technology, An-Bo” or “Experience, Co-Gr.” Philippe is taking the little girl across the room and—oh, he’s so thoughtful—placing a step stool so she can reach one of the upper drawers in the section labeled “Destination, Do-En.” Let’s go eavesdrop. If you all hide here behind this catalog, I’ll tell you what’s happening.

They’ve found the card they were looking for and Philippe is saying “I think you’re going to love it.” He’s explaining that she can look at the white cards labeled “Earthsea” to see all the experiences people have logged when they’ve taken that journey. He’s showing her that there are quite a few cards for Earthsea, actually, because lots of people have gone there (each card can fit about four unique experiences). As he copies down the information from the Earthsea cards for her on a sheet of paper, he’s clarifying that everyone is different and that there’s really no telling how it will be for her. He just handed her the sheet of paper and said (I hear Philippe say this a lot) “no matter what, come back and tell us what it was like for you.” He points over to a big desk in the corner of the room, right next to the self-serve coffee and tea station. A few guests are having a cup of coffee while sitting at the desk, writing on small blue cards. Right next to the desk is a small slot in the wall labelled “Add New Experience.” The Wonder Catalogers take those new submissions and add the experiences to the appropriate cards. You can see Cheryl over there is pulling a blue card from her apron. She’s finding the right drawer and then the correct white card and then pulling it out so she can type more information on it. She’s going to put it right back in the same spot when she’s done.

Sweet gig, right? I mean, again, for me. I love old technologies. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I should clarify that you’re not allowed to use the typewriters. Unless you become a Wonder Cataloger, that is. It’s a coveted position (people wait years for the opportunity). One of the many perks is that you get to use the typewriters. And you get to hang out with Philippe at the WonderCat holiday party.

I’m going to give you some time to peruse the shop on your own. I want you to look around a bit and think about what you want to find. Will you look at the catalog for technologies to see what is listed for the narrative technology you found in our first assignment? Or maybe you’ll see what journeys have made people feel courageous. As soon as you’re done looking around this space, I want you to open your eyes and write down exactly what you’ve imagined, with as much detail as possible. I’ll give you some time to do this and then we’ll discuss.

Storyworld (assignment #2)

Your primary task with this assignment is to read one new text you’ve never read before. You’ll do things as you read and after you read to get the most out of this reading experience. If you’re not sure what you want to read, I encourage you to use the experiences and tecnologies you identified in the first assignment to search WonderCat for ideas. You might look especially for texts that are noted to use narrative technologies that authors use when constructing storyworlds, but this isn’t required. Every story has a storyworld for you to think about.

You will follow the same steps as you did in assignment one to chronicle and process your reading experience in a post for our course website. You can return to the prompt for “Getting Started” if you’re fuzzy on the details. We’ll be following these same steps for the third and fourth assignments this semester, so this will start to feel familiar

Part 1: Draft your post on course website

• Describe your experiences
• Classify your experiences
• Describe the features prompting your experiences
• Try to determine the narrative technologies used to create the features you describe (if possible, isolating technologies used to construct the storyworld)

Part 2: Revise your post, making sure it includes

• Any sources clearly cited (hyperlinks for online sources and in-text citations for print sources) with a list of works cited at the end.
• Title
• Featured Image (usually an image associated with the story you’re writing about)
• Complete media file details for featured image and any other images included in post.
  • “caption” field should include an attribution statement (TASL guidance here)
  • “alternative text” field should provide a summary of what is in the image
  • “description” field should include the URL for the image file you downloaded

FAQs

• Should I choose something short so I can finish reading in time? You don’t need to finish reading the text you select in order to complete this assignment (you should only create notes for the part of the text you are able to read). Keep reading after you’ve turned this assignment in and consider expanding your edition at the end of the semester (a more substantial tour guide edition is one option for the final project).
• Should I do research on what I’m reading? Only if you want to. You can process your reading experience without looking at what others have said about the text, but some students like getting the perspective of others. If you do look at secondary sources, please mention this in your reading experience section (even if you don’t wind up citing the sources)
• So, this isn’t a typical “English paper”? No, it isn’t. There is no requirement to have a single argument or claim. You are not required to find peer-reviewed sources to support or contextualize what you want to say. There is no requirement to be original. I want you to let your interests guide you and share your experiences, questions, and theories with me (and your classmates!).
• Can you share an example of what a finished product is supposed to look like? Yes! You can check out this page to see a variety of posts written in response to this assignment prompt.
• Do I have to share my post with classmates? You can choose to share your post with classmates or share it only with me (set your post to private if you only want me to see it).
• How will you grade this? This assignment is graded on a pass/fail basis. If you engage with the task and turn in a project, you will get 100%.

Classifying Experiences and Technologies (responding to feedback on assignment #2)

After you submit your post, I will read it and prepare feedback for you. This won’t be the kind of feedback where I tell you if what you’ve done is right or wrong (these are your experiences, after all). Instead, my feedback will help you brainstorm the best language to describe your experience, get more specific about the features you observed, and explore if the narrative technologies you’ve identified already exist in WonderCat. I will do this by reading your post aloud, responding to your ideas and asking questions about your experiences and the specific features you mention. I want you to think of this video as me continuing the conversation you started by writing your post. With this assignment, I’m asking you to continue the conversation by responding to my feedback and making classification decisions for the experiences and technologies mentioned in your post.

Please create a word document responding to my feedback with your own commentary, questions, and final classification decisions. You can use this document as a template if you would like. Upload that document to Canvas by the deadline. This assignment is graded pass/fail. If you engage with the task, respond to my feedback, and make final classification decisions by the deadline, you will get 100%.

Tour Guide Edition (creative assignment)

This assignment invites you to think of yourself as a tour guide for a future student who chooses to read the text you read for the storyworld assigment. When you’re reading a text written in a time other than our current moment, it can sometimes seem that you’re in a strange land filled with unfamiliar rules and languages. You will position yourself as a tour guide for the student who wants a little help as they navigate this experience. I say you’ll be a tour guide, but you’ll actually be an editor. You will compose an introductory note to help these future students prepare for their journey into the unfamiliar and include notes at moments in the text where you think you would have benefited from an explanation or context. You might consider describing, in your introductory note, what a person in the storyworld of your chosen text can do that can’t be done in our world (or what can’t be done in that world that can be done in our world).

I will show you how to use Hypothesis to create a tour guide edition. I’ll help you create a free account, find an existing digital edition of your chosen text, and create annotations in a private group. If you’ve only ever used Hypothesis inside Canvas, you will need to create a free account for the public tool following the instructions here (I will provide guidance in class as you do this): https://web.hypothes.is/start/. I will ask you to draft and revise your annotations in a private group named for your edition. This will allow you to decide how you will share your introduction and notes. We’ll walk through this in class, but here is guidance on creating a private group: https://web.hypothes.is/help/how-to-create-a-private-group/. If you would prefer not to create a Hypothesis account, let me know. There are ways to complete this assignment without creating an account.

To sum up, here’s a list of the things you need to do for this assignment:

• A private group in Hypothesis named for your edition (usually students use the title of the text they’ve chosen)
• Annotations for a future reader, beginning with an introductory note
• Citations for all information in notes that incorporate source material
• If you want your classmates to be able to see your edition, add the “invite group members” link to your storyworld post. If you want to share only with me, you can share the link with me by e-mail)

FAQs

• Should this edition be created for the same text I chose for my storyworld post? Yes.
• Do I have to share my edition with classmates? You can share your edition with your classmates by adding a link to it in your storyworld post. You can also keep your edition private by e-mailing me the link to your private Hypothesis group.
• How will you grade this? This assignment is graded on a pass/fail basis. If you engage with the task and turn in a complete project, you will get 100%.

Character (Assignment #3)

Your primary task with this assignment is to read one new text you’ve never read before. You’ll do things as you read and after you read to get the most out of this reading experience. If you’re not sure what you want to read, I encourage you to use the experiences and techniques you identified in the first assignment to search WonderCat for ideas. You might look especially for texts that are noted for technologies of character creation, but this isn’t required. All stories have characters.

You will follow the same steps as you did in assignment one to chronicle and process your reading experience in a post for our course website. You can return to the prompt for “Getting Started” if you’re fuzzy on the details. We’ll be following these same steps for the third and fourth assignments this semester, so this will start to feel familiar

Part 1: Draft your post on course website

• Describe your experiences
• Classify your experiences
• Describe the features prompting your experiences
• Try to determine the narrative technologies used to create the features you describe (if possible, isolating technologies used to create one or more characters)

Part 2: Revise your post, making sure it includes

• Any sources clearly cited (hyperlinks for online sources and in-text citations for print sources) with a list of works cited at the end.
• Title
• Featured Image (usually an image associated with the story you’re writing about)
• Complete media file details for featured image and any other images included in post.
  • “caption” field should include an attribution statement (TASL guidance here)
  • “alternative text” field should provide a summary of what is in the image
  • “description” field should include the URL for the image file you downloaded

FAQs

• Should I choose something short so I can finish reading in time? You don’t need to finish reading the text you select in order to complete this assignment (you should only create notes for the part of the text you are able to read). Keep reading after you’ve turned this assignment in and consider expanding your edition at the end of the semester (a more substantial tour guide edition is one option for the final project).
• Should I do research on what I’m reading? Only if you want to. You can process your reading experience without looking at what others have said about the text, but some students like getting the perspective of others. If you do look at secondary sources, please mention this in your reading experience section (even if you don’t wind up citing the sources)
• So, this isn’t a typical “English paper”? No, it isn’t. There is no requirement to have a single argument or claim. You are not required to find peer-reviewed sources to support or contextualize what you want to say. There is no requirement to be original. I want you to let your interests guide you and share your experiences, questions, and theories with me (and your classmates!).
• Can you share an example of what a finished product is supposed to look like? Yes! You can check out this page to see a variety of posts written in response to this assignment prompt.
• Do I have to share my post with classmates? You can choose to share your post with classmates or share it only with me (set your post to private if you only want me to see it).
• How will you grade this? This assignment is graded on a pass/fail basis. If you engage with the task and turn in a project, you will get 100%.

Classifying Experiences and Technologies (responding to feedback on assignment #3)

After you submit your post, I will read it and prepare feedback for you. This won’t be the kind of feedback where I tell you if what you’ve done is right or wrong (these are your experiences, after all). Instead, my feedback will help you brainstorm the best language to describe your experience, get more specific about the features you observed, and explore if the narrative technologies you’ve identified already exist in WonderCat. I will do this by reading your post aloud, responding to your ideas and asking questions about your experiences and the specific features you mention. I want you to think of this video as me continuing the conversation you started by writing your post. With this assignment, I’m asking you to continue the conversation by responding to my feedback and making classification decisions for the experiences and technologies mentioned in your post.

Please create a word document responding to my feedback with your own commentary, questions, and final classification decisions. You can use this document as a template if you would like. Upload that document to Canvas by the deadline. This assignment is graded pass/fail. If you engage with the task, respond to my feedback, and make final classification decisions by the deadline, you will get 100%.

Use a Technology of Character Creation (creative assignment)

After you’ve read and processed your reading experience, I want you to create a new character by using at least one technology of character creation. Please share your thought process as you plan to create this character (even ideas you consider but discard). In the last assignment, you were introducing future readers to the storyworld in an assignment, but with this assignment you are creating an entirely new character. This can be challenging! You might consider taking a person you know well (yourself or a close friend or family member) and imagining them as a character in a familiar storyworld (based on reality, like the gym where you work out, or fiction, like Westeros). Or you might imagine a conversation between yourself and an actual person who you don’t know very well, either because they lived in an earlier time period (Mary Todd Lincoln) or because you just haven’t actually met them (Justin Bieber). This is the approach I describe in the preface—it can be very fun!).

When you’re ready (and that might be right away, without any planning!), write a short narrative (or a small section of a larger work) featuring the character you have created. This might prove challenging if you haven’t done much creative writing. It was hard for me the first time I did it! This part of the assignment is meant to help you experience the challenges and possibilities of character creation and so it’s important that you move beyond planning into actual creation. This task is challenging because not only do you need a storyworld to place this character into, but you also need to make decisions about how you will narrate this character. Will the character be the narrator or will the character be described by the narrator (or will there be no explicit narrator because you’ll create a play)? What combination of speech, thought, and action will be narrated?

You can compose this in Microsoft Word and upload your creation to Canvas or you add it as a new section of your character post if you want to share with your classmates.

Plot (Assignment #4)

Your primary task with this assignment is to read one new text you’ve never read before. You’ll do things as you read and after you read to get the most out of this reading experience. If you’re not sure what you want to read, I encourage you to use the experiences and techniques you identified in the first assignment to search WonderCat for ideas. You might look especially for texts that are noted to use narrative technologies that authors use when creating plots, but this isn’t required. All stories have a plot.

You will follow the same steps as you did in assignment one to chronicle and process your reading experience in a post for our course website. You can return to the prompt for “Getting Started” if you’re fuzzy on the details.

Part 1: Draft your post on course website

• Describe your experiences
• Classify your experiences
• Describe the features prompting your experiences
• Try to determine the narrative technologies used to create the features you describe (if possible, isolating technologies used to create the plot)

Part 2: Revise your post, making sure it includes

• Any sources clearly cited (hyperlinks for online sources and in-text citations for print sources) with a list of works cited at the end.
• Title
• Featured Image (usually an image associated with the story you’re writing about)
• Complete media file details for featured image and any other images included in post.
  • “caption” field should include an attribution statement (TASL guidance here)
  • “alternative text” field should provide a summary of what is in the image
  • “description” field should include the URL for the image file you downloaded

FAQs

• Should I choose something short so I can finish reading in time? You don’t need to finish reading the text you select in order to complete this assignment (you should only create notes for the part of the text you are able to read). Keep reading after you’ve turned this assignment in and consider expanding your edition at the end of the semester (a more substantial tour guide edition is one option for the final project).
• Should I do research on what I’m reading? Only if you want to. You can process your reading experience without looking at what others have said about the text, but some students like getting the perspective of others. If you do look at secondary sources, please mention this in your reading experience section (even if you don’t wind up citing the sources)
• So, this isn’t a typical “English paper”? No, it isn’t. There is no requirement to have a single argument or claim. You are not required to find peer-reviewed sources to support or contextualize what you want to say. There is no requirement to be original. I want you to let your interests guide you and share your experiences, questions, and theories with me (and your classmates!).
• Can you share an example of what a finished product is supposed to look like? Yes! You can check out this page to see a variety of posts written in response to this assignment prompt.
• Do I have to share my post with classmates? You can choose to share your post with classmates or share it only with me (set your post to private if you only want me to see it).
• How will you grade this? This assignment is graded on a pass/fail basis. If you engage with the task and turn in a project, you will get 100%.

Classifying Experiences and Technologies (responding to feedback on assignment #4)

After you submit your post, I will read it and prepare feedback for you. This won’t be the kind of feedback where I tell you if what you’ve done is right or wrong (these are your experiences, after all). Instead, my feedback will help you brainstorm the best language to describe your experience, get more specific about the features you observed, and explore if the narrative technologies you’ve identified already exist in WonderCat. I will do this by reading your post aloud, responding to your ideas and asking questions about your experiences and the specific features you mention. I want you to think of this video as me continuing the conversation you started by writing your post. With this assignment, I’m asking you to continue the conversation by responding to my feedback and making classification decisions for the experiences and technologies mentioned in your post.

Please create a word document responding to my feedback with your own commentary, questions, and final classification decisions. You can use this document as a template if you would like. Upload that document to Canvas by the deadline. This assignment is graded pass/fail. If you engage with the task, respond to my feedback, and make final classification decisions by the deadline, you will get 100%.

Summarize the Plot, Then Change It (creative assignment)

This activity invites you to think about the plot of the story you’ve selected by thinking about how that plot has been summarized. Almost every Wikipedia article about a work of literature has a section with the heading of “Plot Summary.” As we’ve discussed, reading a plot summary can never replace the experience of actually reading a text because it is meant only to convey a summary of the plot, not the full complexity of the text. That said, summarizing a plot is very challenging, as is clear from the guidance Wikipedia editors have created for the task.

Your first task is to create your own summary of the text you’ve read. If you haven’t finished reading, please focus on summarizing the part of the plot that you have experienced. After you’ve done this, you can check if a Wikipedia article exists about the text you’ve read.

If you’re not done and you don’t like spoilers, ask a classmate (or me) to do this for you!

If there is a plot summary in Wikipedia, think about how you might improve it with elements of your summary. Paste the plot summary into your post with a clear citation. Below the summary as written in Wikipedia, paste the same summary again and make it better drawing on the summary you wrote or new ideas that occur to you (bold all of the changes you make). Describe why you think your changes improve the summary. If you create a plot summary from scratch, indicate in your post that this is what you’ve done.

After you’ve created your new or revised plot summary, copy it and paste it below, un-bolding all of the things you changed in the previous section. Use this revised summary to imagine how you might change the plot in some way. You might immediately have ideas for changes that you think would improve the plot, but you can also use this activity to engage in a thought experiment. What would happen if a character knew something sooner? How would things be different if an event didn’t happen? Remember, your task is to think about the decisions an author has made about the plot. After making your changes to the plot, write about your reasons for making those changes and how you think the changed text might impact readers. Would the changes alter or eliminate the emotions you experienced while reading the text?

Please create a new post to share your Wikipedia summary, your improved summary, and your plot revisions on our course website. You can choose to share your post with classmates or share it only with me (set your post to private if you only want me to see it).

Final Project

You’ve written four posts this semester. Throughout this experience, I have encouraged you to capture and share your responses to literary works that you are experiencing for the first time. As we conclude the semester, I want to give you an opportunity to revisit the literature you’ve read (finishing texts you didn’t have time to finish earlier in the semester) and expand on the discoveries you made through the first four assignments.

Since the start of the semester, our course website has been set to private, meaning that only the students enrolled in the course can see the site. You have chosen between publishing your work (making it visible to your classmates) or keeping it private (so only I can see it). At the end of the semester, I will make our entire website public and you can choose to have your posts included in that public site (visible to anyone who finds our website) or set to private (still only visible to me). You also can set a password for any posts you want to share with family and friends (but not the general public).

Possibilities

Select one of the following options for the final project!

Revise Three of your Posts for Publication on our Course Website

Revise three or more of your posts for inclusion in our course website, which I will make fully public at the end of the semester. If you choose this option, you will finish the literary work(s) you wrote about in your posts and make sure to include direct quotation or clips to illustrate the specific features you discuss. You will also need to pay careful attention to attribution statements for images and other content created by other people. I encourage you to make this work public, but you are not required to publish any of these posts to receive full credit on this assignment.

Please add the “final project” category to posts that you are revising for this assignment.

It can be hard to understand how citation and attribution statements can work together in a publication. I created a presentation to help with this. Remember that when you incorporate an image alongside the text of your project, you should include a caption below the image that includes an attribution statement. To craft an attribution statement, follow the guidance at this Creative Commons article. If you use the image in a context where captions are not possible (if it is included as a featured image that doesn’t display a caption), include the attribution statement under an “Attribution Statement” heading at the bottom of your page. Note that you can include copyrighted images if you are offering commentary on that image in your post because of the fair use limitation on copyright. You still need to include an attribution statement making it clear who holds the copyright (I typically add “all rights reserved” after the name of the copyright holder).

I will want to see at least one completely revised post when we meet for our individual conference so I can give you feedback. More is better!

Revise a Plot Summary on Wikipedia

This option involves expanding on the work you started with the plot summary assignment to actually make changes to the plot summary of an article on Wikipedia. If you select this option, you will plan revisions that will make the plot summary more accurately meet the guidelines provided for Wikipedia editors and then complete a few Wiki Education trainings (listed below) to prepare to make the changes to the actual article on Wikipedia. Your work on this project will be public. I will help you create a Wikipedia account. The Wikipedia username you select and the changes you make to the article will be visible to anyone who wants to view them (even if another editor changes your edits, your revision will be in the article’s history).

• https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training/students/wikipedia-essentials
• https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training/students/sandboxes-talk-watchlists
• https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/training/students/how-to-edit
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_write_a_plot_summary

I will want to see a draft of your revisions to the plot summary when we meet for our individual conference so I can give you feedback and walk you through making them public.

Be a Tour Guide for a Text from the Past

This option gives you an opportunity to expand the edition you started with the storyworld assignment, preparing something that future students in this course could use. I encourage you to make this work public, but you are not required to make this project public to get full credit for the assignment.

• You need to have finished reading the text you select
• You can keep your edition in a private Hypothesis group or make a public version that will be shared through a future edition of this textbook

I will want to see a revised draft of your editorial introduction and your notes when we meet for our individual conference so I can give you feedback.

Create a Text Exhibit

In a typical “English paper,” a student presents a claim about a text with paragraphs analyzing specific passages from the text and contextual materials to support that claim. This option invites you to present these same components (a claim about a text and specific passages) as an exhibit of three or more items. More specifically, I invite you to curate a “Text Exhibit” for one new text you’ve read this semester (published in the nineteenth century) to display in our department. Beyond making decisions about what to include in your exhibit, this option also involves taking care in crafting object labels for the items you include. You will decide how much to guide viewers to see what you see in the images you have selected (and how much to leave interpretation open). This option could easily become an exhibit of interesting context for the text (leaving the text itself behind) and I don’t want that, so the only restriction is that at least two of the three items you include in your exhibit should feature actual text (a photo of a specific passage from your copy of the text, an image of the text as it first appeared in print, or some other representation of the text itself). I encourage you to install your exhibit in the hallway outside my office, though you are not required to do this (You can submit a Word document including three images and the object labels for the images as your final project if you wish).

• I have a collection of thrifted frames you can select from (and there are hundreds more in thrift stores near campus if you want to find your own!)
• We can print in color up to 11×17 (I will show you how to prepare your image for printing using free tools)
• Your primary writing for this assignment will be for the object labels to accompany each item in the exhibit. To help you prepare to write in this potentially unfamiliar genre, please review the guidance prepared by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

I will want to see a draft of your object labels during our individual conference so I can give you feedback.

Final Exam

Our final exam will begin with an opportunity to share feedback on the final projects students have decided to share with the class. We will do this for no more than 20 minutes, allowing the rest of the time for the Final Exam, which is an open book exam. You can prepare for this exam by engaging with the work of the course all semester. For the exam, I will share a text published in the nineteenth century that should be unfamiliar to everyone in the class. Your task will be to read it, describe your experience of it, and describe everything you can about it, using the techniques you have learned this semester (actual reading, identification of generic features, Internet research, database research, etc.). If you turn something in, you will receive full credit on this exam. I use this exam primarily to assess how fully I’ve accomplished my goals for the course. You are doing the thinking and writing, but I’m the one being evaluated (by myself).