Unit 4: Remixing and ReflectingUnit 4 Assignment: Remixing the Research Essay
- Format: Varies, but must include at least 250 words of text that the writer creates.
- Length: varies depending on medium; written work should be about 1-2 pages.
- Value: This project will be graded out of 100 possible points, and will be worth 5% of the grade for the course.
Overview:
One essential aspect of writing for audiences that we have left to explore at the end of our FYW sequence is addressing audience needs, values, and expectations in ways that go “beyond” the conventional academic essay (double-spaced, white pages with 1-inch margins). There are many reasons why you as a writer must be flexible and able to “recast,” remix, re-mediate, and/or de-form your central insights, research, claims, and conclusions from the Research Essay (CEL xxvii).
- To infuse your approach to issues with different energy, passion, or personality
- To be generous in explaining or giving more context for ideas that you write about
- To reach audiences in different modes, technologies, and materials
- To address different audiences with different expectations in style, tone, language, structure, etc.
- To offer new perspectives on issues via different genres of writing
- To de-form or disassemble your previous research for analysis and re-interpretation
Just as there are many different purposes for remixing your central insights and ideas, there are also many different ways to accomplish these purposes. For this assignment, we look to the “Beyond the Essay” sections of CEL for inspiration:
- Writing an Open Letter (Ch. 8, p. 264)
- Designing a Tattoo (Ch. 9, p. 296)
- Creating an Evaluation Form (Ch. 10, p. 330)
- Creating a Photo Essay (Ch. 11, p. 363)
- Designing a Visual Essay / Collage / Poster (Ch. 12, p.424)
- Other ideas (Ch. 12, p. 389): Speech, bumper sticker, website, T-shirt, poem, song, performance, comic strip, podcast
For this final assignment, you will use the suggestions above or come up with your own way to unleash your creativity in remixing or going beyond the writing that you completed for the Unit 3: Addressing Issues Research Essay assignment.
Assignment:
With your topic, issue, research question, and basic thesis in mind, experiment with one or more different approaches to addressing the cultural or social issue you wrote about in your Unit 3: Addressing Issues Research Essay.
Your experiment(s) may take on different forms or modes, such as one of the suggestions from the “Beyond the Essay” sections in the CEL listed above. Or you may choose to experiment with writing for different audiences: one academic audience and one nonacademic audience of specialists or enthusiasts.
Along with your essay, write a short but detailed self-analysis (200-250 words) evaluating the choices you made (in content, design, tone, etc.) and explaining how your approach changes the audience, purpose, or context of your original submission to the Research Essay assignment.
Components:
In order to finish this assignment, we will complete the following parts together over the last two weeks:
- Remixed Text: the final text, audio file, image, video file, or other object that you produce as your Remix. For video or audio files, also produce a transcript of the dialogue or narration that you use in the Remix.
- Remix Self-Analysis: a detailed self-analysis evaluating the choices you made (in content, design, tone, etc.) and explaining how your approach changes the audience, purpose, or context of your original submission to the Research Essay assignment.
Objectives:
In this project, you will
- Recast, remix, re-mediate, and/or de-form the central insights, research, claims, and conclusions from the Research Essay (CEL xxvii).
- Experiment with strategies for changing the purpose, audience, and/or context of your approach to a relevant cultural or social issue
- Analyze, explain, and justify the choices you make as a writer, including decisions made to change the content, form, design, tone, language, and/or style of your writing for this assignment.
