Final Project

Your final project will be a larger creative work that builds on one of the three units of the class.

You will make a creative project and a related essay. For the creative project, you have three options. You can deepen your engagement with medieval illumination by creating a Grinnell Book of Hours (or you can propose another kind of contemporary Book of Hours). You can make a contemporary almanac—again, specifically for Grinnell or for another context that you propose. Finally, you can use the inspiration of our last unit to make a zine or artist’s book of your own.

The Creative Component

This element of the assignment leaves plenty of room for creative freedom. Fundamentally, it involves going beyond the individual experiments that you’ve performed in your assignments so far to create a small but complete work of your own: a small Book of Hours with multiple pages, a compact almanac with multiple elements, or a complete zine or artist’s book. Whatever you choose, it will be important to create your work with formal elements that you can explain through your experience of the readings and activities of this course.

You will propose prototypes of each kind of project, and when you decide what you want to do, we will work together to make sure that you have an ambitious but manageable plan for the end of the semester.

As with the first two projects, you can define the audience of your final project. Perhaps the audience is simply our class. You might think of other people you would like to introduce to your vision of Grinnell, however, such as friends or family members who are thinking of you in your first semester here. The audience of the essay section of your project is our class, so you can assume your reader is familiar with the readings and activities we have done together.

When you submit your project, you will complete this submission form, which helps ensure that you have understood and met the expectations of the assignment.

Your Essay: Standard Version

You will write three sections, as described below. Each section should contain 150-300 words, for a total of at least 700. As we have discussed in class, you will use Chicago NB style citation (PDF) to document your sources. This version of the paper will use and cite at least two sources, and you are welcome to use our class readings among those sources.

Section 1: Overview of Your Creative Piece and Its Audience

Introduce the reader to the basics of your book. What kind of book is it? How do you think of its intended audience? What content does it include?

Section 2: Form and Content

Explain why you have chosen the form of your work in relation to its content. How do the affordances of this form allow you to do something with the content that would not be possible in the same way with other forms?

Section 3: Concluding Thoughts

Bring your thinking about the project together. How do form, content, and audience relate to one another in the book object you are sharing with us?

Your Essay: Extra Version

You will write four sections, as described below. Each section should contain 150-300 words, for a total of at least 900. As we have discussed in class, you will use Chicago NB style citation (PDF) to document your sources. This version of the paper will use and cite at least five sources, and you are welcome to use our class readings among those sources.

Section 1: Overview of Your Creative Piece and Its Audience

[same as Standard Version]

Section 2: Form and Content

[same as Standard Version]

Section 3: Response to Historical or Artistic Inspirations

Explain at least four specific influences that have informed your project. These influences may include those you have seen or read about in class. They may be sources that explain historical phenomena, artistic works that gave you ideas about what you wanted to create, or a mix of both categories.

Section 4: Concluding Thoughts

[same as Standard Version]