Fourth Unit Engagement Portfolio
Rubric: I will use this rubric to assess your work.
Overview:
This assignment encourages you to explain the rhetorical framing of one
specific challenge to contemporary social order (eg., artificial
intelligence, authoritarianism, automation, declining civility,
environmental degradation, gun violence, etc.) in a manner that exceeds
time and resources available to a three unit course. Your portfolio
shall include the following elements:
Two
page summary of one utopian or dystopian novel (a work of fiction, at least 100 pages,
written after 1980) that you have not previously read: Read the entire book and explain how
this text frames your selected challenge. [State that element clearly
and early.] Your summary will include plot overview, relevant
characters, key scenes, and at least four brief quotations meaningfully
integrated into your analysis. Include an appendix of photocopies of
each quoted page.
Here are some resources that can guide your search [remember after-1980-requirement, though]:
Two page summary
of four additional popular culture texts (half page each): Augment your
selected book with a broader constellation of texts that address your
selected challenge. Ensure that each text reflects a different medium
(eg., song lyrics, music video imagery, advertisement, graphic novel,
video game, television show, film, etc.).
One page
synthesis: Describe how the book and your four additional popular
culture texts frame your selected challenge. Organize this synthesis
according to the following questions: (1) How do these texts align and
diverge to explain the nature of the challenge? (2) Drawing solely from
at least one of your selected texts, how can we hope to address this
challenge?