Sample Assignment: Collaborative Text Analysis
For this essay, select a primary source document archived on Empire Online, read it with consideration of the insights it offers into the (his)stories of empire (or of resistance to those stories), and present an analysis of that document. You may find relevant documents by running a keyword search on the database using a term that has been raised in our reading or discussion. You can select from our compiled list of documents. You might also access a critical essay (such as Samson’s “Cultural Contacts, c 1763-1969”) and follow one of the links described. If you select a long work (a novel, a book or an individual’s journal), you should focus only on 1-3 representative chapters.
This project will be collaborative and will be composed on Scalar, an open-source web publishing platform developed at the University of Southern California. This platform requires you to think about elements of document design and allows for visually appealing aspects, like images, video, and other visual or auditory media. In setting this assignment, I want to encourage you to experiment with the form and content of your essay, to include visual media elements, and to think about diverse ways to engage your readers in your argument. This assignment should challenge you as a writer and allow you some creative license!
Parameters for the project:
1. Collaborative groups of 2 or 3: Our class will produce one book. Each group will add a chapter to this book. As a class, we will compile a range of writing and thinking about some of the primary documents on Empire Online.
2. Each group will work with just one primary text from Empire Online (images and posters from the database are a good addition, but cannot serve as the primary document).
3. Each group should have a minimum of 6 -9 “pages” to their chapter and all pages need at least 1 visual or auditory media element. Consider this project as roughly the equivalent of a 3-page essay for each participant.
4. Within each group’s path of pages, include at least the following elements (some may overlap):
- a title page (splash page)
- An introduction page that includes your names linked to an “About the authors” page (I’ll set up this page—you can add to it).
- A statement of argument
- Summary: Because your readers will be unfamiliar with the work you select, you should include a fairly detailed summary of your source as well as an analysis. Keep in mind that your summary should be accurate, precise, and sufficiently detailed to give your readers a clear idea of the topic, approach, and context of a particular work while also serving to support and advance your own analysis of the work.
- Relevant quotations, summaries, paraphrases and analysis.
- At least one associative link to a page about a contemporary issue (our time and/or the original writer’s time)
- A creative element or unusual way of presenting the issue(s) you’re writing about
- (such as, a comic using Comic Life, a Twine story, a short video or audio recording, a staged conversation, a time line with Timemapper, a Google map with pins and text and so on.)
- One “annotated” image or video (annotations are specific Scalar terminology for cuing up a video or framing a selected area of an image—see webinar below)
- In-text citations and a works cited list (note that all images should have a Creative Commons License “to use, share, or modify” and should be cited in the description to the media file)
- Clearly marked paths (this pathing will be clearer as you learn Scalar)
1. Select your primary document. Only one group may write about a selected source. I will set up a google document to link to from Bb.
2. Begin to watch the Scalar 2: Introduction webinar (the first 25 minutes are very much about the background of Scalar but after that it takes you through the basics what you need to know to complete this project—uploading media and text, building paths, annotating media)
Revision Process
Instructor/peer feedback using Hypothes.isFinal Submission should be accompanied by a one-paragraph assessment of your group’s work and a word document in which you copy and paste your individual contributions to the project (this requirement is a feature of accountability and will not be graded)
Visit our book: Accounts of the British Empire
Assignment written by Kristine Kelly
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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