The requirements for the course are as follows: (1) Electronic Discussion (15%); 2) Class Attendance & Participation (10%); (2) On-line Exhibit (25%); (3) Illustrated Essay (25%); and (4) Web Essay (25%); and 5) a self-evaluation (1 page, typed, single-spaced) assessing your performance in the course (not graded but required).

b. Write an introductory section (500 words) that presents an argument illustrating your quotation. The essay must include a thesis.

c. Prepare ancillary text to explain your exhibition to its audience or divide the remainder of your essay (500 words) among your images.

d. Use the close-up feature of the site to show details.

e. Label or caption each image appropriately in the exhibition.

DUE: September 26

Part 2-Illustrated Essay

Part 2 of the extended assignment involves several tasks. First, scour the web for images that further illustrate your augment and adds between 5ú10 images to your original exhibit. (You may also wish to substitute different images.) Second, access the library's online databases or the library stacks and locate 6ú8 articles pertaining to your essay and either print or photocopy them. Third, return to the Web and look for good articles or sites that further illustrate your theme. Fourth, write a traditional essay that extends your argument, makes reference to your library material, and includes the images as illustrations and the web materials as links. The essay, itself should be 5ú7 pages and include captions, footnotes (or endnotes), bibliography. Think carefully about how you wish to present the information in your essay and your images. Do you want to place your images inline, refer to them in an appendix or appendices, or some combination? Or, do you want the images to occupy facing pages or half a page? How do you want to present the rest of your scholarly apparatus?

DUE: October 31

Part 3-Web Essay

For Part 3, adapt your revised, illustrated essay to the web. For your web essay, consider how your might use the inherent characteristics of the digital format to make your essay more effective.

1. Do you want to the viewer to click on a smaller, inline image to access a larger version?

2. How will you handle the footnotes?

3. Do you want an overview slide show?

4. What can the web can do for your essay that print cannot and what obstacles you must overcome.

5. Again, in preparing your web essay, you should:

a. Choose a title that reflects your theme and, if appropriate, organize your web essay into sub-themes with sub-titles.

b. Use images and image details to illustrate your argument.

c. Use CSS to present your text in the most legible and readable manner.

d. Label or caption each image appropriately.

e. Choose colors, typefaces, graphics, and special effects appropriate to your essay.

f. Prepare a file for printing and/or download.

DUE: December 11

This is a multi-part assignment that you will work on in various ways throughout the semester. Because you will be using variations of the same theme, it is extremely important that you select a theme at the outset that you can work with effectively. You might think of Part 1 as a first draft, Part 2 as a second draft, and Part 3 as a final draft. Remember that a first draft is one that has undergone serious revision.

Part 1-Web Exhibit

1. Choose one of the following quotations about America as the theme for an exhibition of American images and a historical essay about the images:

Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity—an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978), U.S. Democratic politician

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), British playwright and author

When we look at Americans through the lens of their art, what do we see?

Robert Hughes (b. 1936), US art critic

America loves the representation of its heroes to be not just larger than life, but stupendously, awesomely bigger than anything else. If blue whales built statues to each other they'd be smaller than these.

Simon Hoggart (b. 1946), British journalist.

To say nothing is out here is incorrect; to say the desert is stingy with everything except space and light, stone and earth is closer to the truth.

William Least Heat Moon (b. 1939), Native American author

In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.

Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. essayist, critic, filmmaker, and novelist

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.

Hendrik Willem Van Loon (1882-1944), US journalist and author

Westward the course of empire takes its way.

Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), British prelate and American visitor

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited and the wealth and confusion man has created.

Edward Steichen (1879-1973), US photographer

2. Using the Art Collector facility at the Minneapolis Institute of Art,

3. Choose 10-15 works that reflect, illustrate, contradict, or explore the ideas expressed in the quotation you have chosen as your theme. Be sure to use text, labeling, and close-up features to prepare your exhibit.

4. Prepare a “virtual exhibition” of the works you have chosen

5. In preparing your virtual exhibition, you should:

a. Choose a title that reflects your theme and, if appropriate, organize your exhibition into sub-themes with sub-titles.
 

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