Project Descriptions

Short Description

Group research and development of a zine, wiki (using PBwiki), website, digital story, or documentary film: for this project you will work with a small group of classmates to investigate one of this culture's fears from the past (at least 20 years ago). You will use the Internet as your primary source of research, and you will examine this fear as it was portrayed in at least two of the following sites: mainstream media (TV, magazine, and newsprint primarily), entertainment (movies), educational materials, personal accounts (interviews), and propaganda (posters, etc). Your group will then create a zine, wiki, website, digital story, powerpoint presentation, or short film that will accurately present your findings to a group of interested and educated people outside of our classroom.

Begin by agreeing on a particular fear to investigate as a group. I've included a few ideas here, but you may know of others. You'll want to do some background reading on the topic before you discuss how to proceed with the project. If you use ANY information from ANY site, make a note of the following: Name of site, organization or individual in charge of the site, web address, date you visited the site. You will need this information to site your sources, but you may also want to direct readers to this site if you create a wiki or website.

Group Presentation of research--each group will present their research projects (wikis, websites, etc) to the class.

Each person in the group will be responsible for writing a researched and thoughtful analysis of the group's topic (3-5 pages)--you will be responsible in your individual analysis for explaining the way the fear was represented/presented to the general public, explaining the historical context for that fear (what else was going on at the time), examining what that fear was meant to teach the public (morality), and analyzing what that fear really represented.

Project II--"Terror and Crime and Y2K, oh my!"

This project includes the following:

Individual research and development of a collage (poster, single-page website, or 30-second video)

Annotated Bibliography & participation in and completion of the online & real library sessions

Individual, researched analysis of topic (5-7 pages)

Short Description
With your group project you investigated a fear from at least 20 years ago and developed a group project/presentation and individual researched analysis.

Three things will be different about Project II:

this time we're turning the critical lens on ourselves and you will investigate a more recent fear, one that is no more than 20 years old (preferably something from the last decade or so);
this time you're going to be using more academic sources for your research analysis. You will complete online library work & attend one class in the library to learn to use the library's databases, search engines, and other resources.
this time you're working on your own; although you will have time to peer review and consult with your classmates on your project, your analysis, annotated bibliography, and collage will be done on your own.

Your researched analysis will include both online and library resources, so be prepared to choose a fear that you sense has been covered by academics, researchers, and/or the government. In other words, a project examining more current iterations of the "end of the world" might bear little fruit, while one examining the SARS epidemic (and our and the media's reactions to that epidemic) will be very fruitful because we can assume that the medical community has researched SARS as well.

The goal will be to discover both the hype of that fear (probably in online sources, the media, and movies/TV) and the reality of that fear (probably in library and more authoritative sources).

Steps in the process:

Your first step is to determine what fear you're going to investigate. Go here for a list of possibilities.

Next you will use the library instruction next week to begin researching your topic.

Then you will write an annotated bibliography of five sources that you will use for your individual researched analysis.

Next you will write your individual, 5-7 page researched analysis.

And finally, you will develop a collage (poster, single-page website, or 30-second video) about the fear you researched.