Semester project

As we’ve been discussing, and as Heather Sheppard outlined during her research presentation (using Ballard Denny’s as a model), all of the writings for the rest of the semester will be considered as ONE PIECE. While some weeks will be prompted, others will be self-directed. Formats and responses will be different—some weeks you’ll write poetry, essays, short stories, scripts, blocking notes, proposals, forms, drafts, and notes. All of these writings (along with your notes from class and observations from the field) will be submitted periodically throughout the semester (see below), along with a bibliography. The bibliography is a cognitive map of your investigations during this course. It will record the places you go, the books and articles you read, the images you see, interviews you conduct, tours you take, films you watch, music you hear, conversations you hold. The semester will see this writing project grow organically.

While the first three weeks have been focused on The Reverse Charrette Project, the next several weeks will be focusing on four discrete but potentially interconnected things:  Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, the homeless population that shares our city with us, the waste stream moving through Seattle, and your work identifying locations you’ve passed, been curious about, fear, love, hate, or know already. We’ll begin by casting a wide net, looking at several sites, getting a feel for what kind of writings will work, and then slowly focus, narrow down a group of sites that may have commonalities, significant differences, or nothing in common at all. 

To begin, we’ll look at your writings weekly (2-3 pages recommended per person, every week), in a series of peer-review sessions; sharing approaches, reading works for content and form. We’ll integrate textual analysis, research methodologies, and conceptual approaches to a potentially wide range of places around town.