Project #3: Student Showcase

In the second half of the semester, we will work on creating student showcases of student's literary knowledge. Each week, students will analyze various elements of literature and practice applying literary criticism to each text. Within the Canvas modules, we will talk through a different form of literature and students will select a provided text or their own text to analyze. Students will create a Google Site to present their showcase including at least 8 pages, one for each form of literature. Each page must include a section for each of the following topics:

Title and author of text
Summary
Form of literature
Genre(s)
Literary devices (at least 3)
Theme (at least 3)
Application of literary criticism (at least 3)

**Note: This is a very similar project to what we did for project 2. You can take the text you used for project 2 and use it as one page within your website. For example, if you chose a song to analyze for project 2, you can use your work from project 2 to fulfil the song page in project 3.

Forms of Literature:

In this project, students will create at least 8 pages, one for each form of literature:

Poem
Short story
Movie
Song lyrics
Book
Essays
Myths
Folklore

Each page will contain the pieces below but be sure to clearly label the form of literature for the week. Each week, students will all be working on the same form of literature, but every other aspect of the Google Sites page will vary from student to student.

Each page of your website should include a clear section dedicated to the topic. Your page can include typed out discussion of these elements, videos of yourself explaining part of these, or audio files. Students also need to include graphics from the text or related to it to enhance the page.

Example:

I created a webpage example of what you are being asked to create. Each week, you will choose a text (one form per week) and create a page like this on that text. Please look through this example page carefully.

Step #1: Create Your Google Site

You want to start by building a Google Site for this project. Each week, you will add an additional page to your site.

This video will show you how to use Google Sites for project 3.

When you create your site, create one page for each of the following. We will complete these together, one per week:

Home Page
Poem
Short story
Movie
Song lyrics
Book
Essays
Myths
Folklore

Prepping each page ahead of time will really help keep you on track each week from now to the end of the semester. On each page, you'll add a heading for the following sections:

Title and author of the text
Summary
Form of literature
Genre(s)
Literary Devices
Theme
Application of literary criticism

Step #2: Select Your Text

In each module, I will provide text options for the specific form we are studying that week. You are welcome to choose a different text than what I provide as long as it fits the needs of the assignment. If you are choosing an alternative text and are unsure if this will work, you can message me to double check. Once you select your text, spend time close reading the literature, taking notes on your observations, reactions, and thoughts, and begin developing your page on Google Sites.

Step #3: Create Your Home Page

Your website should have a home page that introduces this project. You are welcome to organize your page how you'd like and play around with colors, themes, and layouts. I encourage you to upload a video of yourself as well but you are not required to. Please include the following elements on your home page:

Link to your Wordpress Blog with a blurb about it's relevance to this course
An image of you (picture, bitmoji, emjoi, etc) and a brief biography
A brief discussion about your literary interests
Your goals for this showcase of your work (what do you want viewers to understand about your literary interests? How does this work represent you personally? Do you connect emotionally, culturally, and/or socially to this work? In what ways? etc.)

Step #4: Create Your content Pages

Each of your 8 content pages must include the following elements. I encourage you to have fun with this showcase. This will serve as a representation of your studies throughout the semester and your ability to apply literary analysis to a variety of texts. You can use images, videos, and hyperlinks to enhance this project as well.

Section 1: Title and author of the text

This is a bit obvious but be sure to start with a section detailing the title and author of the text. If you can include any images or videos to enhance this, you are welcome to. In the example, I included a picture and a video of the author reading the book.

Section 2: Summary

In this section, students will create a book summary that identifies 6 points of the plot. This section of your webpage can bullet point each of the following 6 points and explain what happened in the text. You do not need direct quotes, just put this in your own words.

Exposition
Inciting Incident
Rising Action
Climax
Falling Action
Resolution

*Note: There are some texts, like poems or songs, that this specific structure may not apply to. If that's the case, you can summarize the text in your own words with as many of these elements included as relevant.

Section 3: Form of Literature

In this section, students will discuss the form of literature of this text. Students should identify the form of literature this text is and discuss the elements that classify it as that form. Bring in specific examples. This might take some outside research to identify specifics about these elements. In my example, I went to the copyright page of the book and pulled details about the publication, art form, and how the book itself is classified in regards to genre.

In this project, students will create at least 8 pages, one for each form of literature:

Poem
Short story
Movie
Song lyrics
Book
Essays
Myths
Folklore

Section 4: Genre(s)

Students will next identify the genres this text can be classified under. Typically, a text can fall under several genres. Based on our lectures, we identified the following genres and characteristics of these:

Children’s literature
Gothic literature
Fiction (historical, drama, science, romance, YA, etc)
Fantasy
Dystopian
Mythology
Nonfiction: biography, autobiography, memoir

This is not a complete list of genres so students may need to conduct additional research to determine which genres a specific text can fall under. In addition to identifying the genre(s), students should discuss elements of the story that help categorize this text within that genre. Students can bullet point these identifying factors or create brief paragraphs discussing this. Students can also choose to include a video or audio file of this discussion.

**I hope to see every genre represented within your final project. If you complete 7 pages and then realize you have two of the above genres left, you do not have to go back and redo your work but try to keep track so you cover every genre above at least once throughout this project.

Section 5: Literary Devices

Through close reading of the text, students will:

Identify several literary devices the author used in the text
Quote specific examples of these literary devices (with MLA parenthetical citations)
Discuss how these devices impacted the text itself

Students are required to include at least 3 different literary devices from the text but can include more if desired.

Section 6: Theme

There are many different themes that can be identified within a text. Students can choose any themes to identify within the text, as long as they can make a strong case for that theme being present. Students should identify 3-5 themes found within the text, if possible. Within each theme, students should bring in specific examples from the text demonstrating that theme (these can be directly quoted or paraphrased with parenthetical citations) and develop their own discussion of how this is representative of that theme. The examples and discussion of each theme should be in paragraph format.

Section 7: Application of Literary Criticism

Finally, students will choose a type of literary criticism to apply to this text. In paragraph format, students will identify various elements of the text that classify this criticism and discuss their application. Students are responsible for ensuring that they use each type of criticism only once throughout this project. If students used Marxist Criticism once already, they cannot use it again. That means students will have 2 criticisms they will NOT use. Here are the criticisms we learned this semester:

Modernism 1890 - c. 1950
Postmodernism 1930s - present
New criticism 1930s-present
Marxist criticism 1930s-present
Deconstruction 1966-present
New Historicism 1980s-present
Postcolonialism 1990s-present
Feminist Criticism 1960s-present
Gender/queer studies 1970s-present
Critical Race Theory 1989-present

Step #5: Submit Your Final Showcase

This project will take us all the way to the end of the semester, week 16. Your final student showcase will be due Saturday even though the last day of the semester is Monday. You will post your final showcase URL on a discussion board and will be asked to view and comment on two peer's showcases. You will look around their project, give your thoughts on their work, and share your favorite page of their showcase.

Congratulations on creating this comprehensive display of your growing knowledge in literary criticism! Keep this page live, this will serve as a great example of your work for future college, scholarship, or job applications.

Rubric

Here is the rubric that will be used in Canvas to assess your submissions each week. If any of these are marked incomplete, you will be asked to revise and resubmit to earn a complete of this submission. Each week's submission must be marked complete in order to pass the course.

I highly recommend you review this rubric yourself each week before submitting your Google Site.

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