Instructor’s Note
In ENG 118: The Art of the Steal, we explored the remix as a tool for social critique and cultural transformation. Student work combined formal academic essays with digital multimedia projects to help cultivate a broader sense of contemporary composition and critical thinking.
In the first assignment, “An Original Plagiarism,” we discussed questions about authorship, fair use, and plagiarism. Students were tasked with the challenge of composing an “original” work created entirely out of materials they did not author, a module based on the practices of Joseph Harris. The project was accompanied by a citation key of their own design. The objectives of this assignment were for students to nuance their understanding of both authorship and plagiarism as well as develop better citation practices.
We then carried this foundation into the world of formal academic writing. In the “Case Study” assignment, students used the theoretical frameworks of Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag to close read and analyze the political and/or formal implications of a cultural object (film, literature, etc.). We refined this practice in the “Critical Updates” assignment, another formal essay, by adding a more substantial research component. Students employed a critical lens of their own design to once again assess the social implications of a cultural object. Both formal essays asked students to connect their arguments to the larger course theme.
For the final project, “An Original Remix,” students created digital multimedia projects that synthesized the ideas of critique and composition explored in the modules above. Students worked in a medium of their own choosing (including video, dance, and collage), responding to works of art in which their individual experience is largely undervalued, misrepresented, or absent and remixing it to better reflect their own values.
The end result, as evidenced in the work collected in this blog, is that students completed the course with a nuanced and robust understanding of authorship, attribution, composition, analysis, and critique. Ultimately, this sequence of assignments is designed to help students better navigate the complexities of not only the college classroom, but the greater social world they participate in.
-Jonathan Ruseski