November 7, 2014 - 08:46
Concluding, Diffracting, and Assessing Your Work in the Identity Matters 360°, Fall 2014
DUE Fri, 12/19 (by 12:30 p.m.)
 Enacting Costumes of Identity, Halloween 2014 | "reflection only displaces the same elsewhere ....What we need is...to diffract...so that we get more promising interference patterns" (Donna Harraway). |
This process invites you to "diffract" on all the work you have done for this 360°, to chronicle what has happened in your evolution as a listener, speaker, writer, artist, connector and agent for change in the group. Your self-evaluation will assist us with our assessments, as we reflect on your engagements and accomplishments across all the dimensions of the 360°.
You've already created a number of products, both written and artistic.
Along with your regularly assigned readings, postings, and class attendance,
three more are due during the final week of classes:
1) By 5 p.m. Sun, 12/7: post your contribution to the 'zine. Tag it #lasthurrah.
2) By 8 a.m. Tues, 12/9, 'Zinesters will send the completed 'zine to Sarah T for printing.
3) 4 p.m. Tuesday, 12/9: all gather to set up our portrait gallery in the Campus Center, and to fold and staple 'zines.
During reading and exam week, you have eight more tasks:
1) Noon-2 p.m., Fri, 12/12: Our Intersectional On-Campus Event, in Rhoads Dining Hall, w/ food--help set up, host, and break down
2) By midnight on Sun, 12/14, four more postings are due for the full cluster: photographs of 1) your self portrait, 2) your portrait of your villager, along with three sentences describing the person you were working with (use a first name only), and 3) your villager's drawing (if there is one). For the fourth posting, write one page about what happened for you @ Camphill: not a summary of what happened, but a description of one important (vivid, definitive, symbolic?) experience that really stood out to you during our time there, a story that speaks to the nature of what you experienced.
3) 10-1 p.m. Mon, 12/15: On-campus visit from Camphill Villagers: be at Campus Center by 10 to welcome them; give individual campus tours 10-11; re-gather in Ely Room @ 11 to present portraits; lunch served @ noon; departure @ 1.
4) By 5 p.m. on Mon, 12/15: posting #15 due for Anne--final reflection on some dimension of international feminism: what have you learned in this last section of the course? What would you like to explore further? If you had to write a paper on this topic, what would you have written about?
5) By midnight Monday, 12/15: write and post your 15-20 pp. paper for Sara, discussing how the process of aging is represented in a memoir.
6) By midnight before your meeting w/ the profs, please log on to Serendip again and
* View the e-portfolio that Serendip has created of much of your work.
When you log on to our group page on Serendip, you’ll see “e-portfolios” in the bar across the top;
clicking on that will call up your portfolio, which has gathered together all of your well events, postings and comments.
If you haven't done this already, open, edit and TAG EACH OF YOUR WEB EVENTS as "web event"
(apologies for the hassle of doing this, but it will make the events more findable
and the portfolio more readable). If you haven't already tagged your short postings for each individual class,
you will also probably find it useful to do that as well.
* Take some time to review all this material, and prepare some notes in response to the following questions.
What do notice as you revisit your whole semester's work? Where you were when we began this process, where you are now, and what’s been happening in between? How have you been learning? What have you been learning? Where do you think the edges of your learning now lie?
* In order to do this, be specific and descriptive, but also evaluative. In this process, consider each of the courses as a distinct place of learning and engagement. Address each class, as well as the creative work you did with Riva, independently in your self-assessment, while also acknowledging ways in which your learning overlapped in each of these spaces
Complete the Identity Matters 360° checklist and submit it electronically (this is the only dimension of the portfolio that will be private = readable only by Anne, Kristin and Sara).
Review your participation in our group work in the classroom and beyond: how present-and-contributing have you been in our class discussions, both large and small? What role have you assumed in our group dynamics, in-class, on-line, and in the other spaces relevant to our 360° (including our field trips, dinners, individual conferences, and artistic collaborations)? How much of your class work was focused on your own learning? In what ways have you been contributing to the learning of others?
Re-consider your reading for the cluster: What were your joys-and-pleasures? What were your challenges? What were the ways that you grew as a reader? Where are your learning edges as a reader?
Review your written work: How much of your on-line writing was "stand-alone," how much written in response to others' reflections? How much effort have you put into the web postings and each of your web events and other papers? What can you say about the quality of these productions? What have you learned about your writing and thinking processes in this 360°? Where have you "moved"?
Reflect also on the degree of your critical, active engagement with the artistic portion of the class. How did Riva's visits and instruction influence your creative thinking and endeavors? How much time and energy did you spend on that work? How satisfied were you with your level of engagement and the result? How has your creative work grown, changed, developed over the course of the semester? Consider what you’ve learned about ‘process’ and ‘material' and about Riva’s work: in what ways has the creative component impacted, transformed, or made you look at the world differently?
Riva adds: try to imagine 1) your encounters at Camphill if you had not done portraits, but simply shadowed and spent time with your partners; 2) if you've seen new, different things in human representations around you than previously; and 3) if you see yourselves differently (literally and figuratively) in the wake of the portraits.
Reflect, more generally, on what happened for you @ Camphill Village. How did your experiences there expand and test your understanding of "identity matters"?
7) Complete the 360° evaluation form. Bring it with you when you...
8) ...meet with Anne, Kristin and Sara for 1/2-an-hour on the afternoon of December 16th, 17th or 18th, to discuss your reflections.
After this meeting (almost there!), you have three more tasks:
1) Write a final reflection on and material representation of the intersecting themes of our 360°: post-and-tag for all three courses a 5-page essay/web event/project that addresses the theme of intersectionality. This could take a number of forms: a close reading of a novel, essay, memoir, or of one or more portraits or other works of art; an ethnographic account of intersections observed during one of our class trips (to Camphill, PMA, Barnes, or the Mütter); an exploration of one or more theoretical approaches to intersectional identity. Feel free to draw on a range of concepts from the reading for all of the three courses (for example: vertical and horizontal identities, contact zones, the ethics of representation, the role of economics, environment, or others in the construction of self…).
2) Post 2-pp. reporting on what emerged during your meeting with your professors.
Title it "Self Evaluation and Reflection," and also
USE THE CHECK BOX TO TAG IT "SELF EVALUATION AND REFLECTION."
3) Upload a banner image to illustrate a central theme of your portfolio.
When you login, you will land on your My Account page. Open “edit,"
and scroll down to “Personal Banner for E-Portfolio,
where you can make an selection to upload and caption.
For examples of what this could look like, see
Jenna Myers: “pushing myself creatively and visually”
Jo: “standing on the rickety bridge between self and other”
Sophia: “peer communication and peer learning”
Refresh your browser, then check to make sure that the final paper, banner and self-evaluation have all shown up in your portfolio (which you can access again from the list along the top of the page). Note that this means that your evaluation, as part of your portfolio, will be publicly available on the web (you are also welcome to e-mail us any comments that you do not want to be public).
Any questions about this process? E-mail adalke@brynmawr.edu.
ALL WORK IS DUE by 12:30 p.m. on Fri, 12/19.
In our responses to our meeting and this portfolio, we'll be giving you grades not just for the quality of your written work, but also for class participation and process. We very much look forward to seeing what you come up with, as well as what you have to say about it.
Thanks for joining in the exploratory journey we've taken together this semester.
We've enjoyed it very much, and learned a lot--
Anne, Kristin, Sara and Riva