Student Work

As our culture becomes increasingly visual – what has been called the ‘pictorial turn’ – written academic papers appear less and less to be the only viable means for documenting learning experiences based on university course work. One goal of this webpage is then to make an argument for recognizing the merit of final projects which depart from the traditional forms of academic essays and written and oral exams. This instructor’s experience has been that individuals put an extraordinary effort into academic work in which they can express forms of experience that go beyond the verbal and the analytical. This includes final projects based on making films or creating visual objects, creative writing, and performances. Students who choose to document their learning in this way also write short essays in which they make explicit how their projects reflect on the course work out of which they grew.

A second goal of this webpage is to celebrate students’ creative efforts. Unless they embark upon university careers, students often lack forums for letting the world know about their exceptional work. This is much more the case if they do not express themselves the most persuasively in academic papers. Thus this page aims to publicize the creative efforts of those students who wish to act or to create films while pursuing an academic degree or combine creative writing with literary studies.

Finally, the third goal of this page is to reflect on the increasing importance of television and other multimodal forms for cultural analysis. Cultural studies needs to become more articulate about the meanings of medial forms and about methods for attaining visual and media literacy. Tools for describing ideologies inherent to various medial forms also need to be named. This page then also highlights student work which is engaged in media analysis.

Please join me in applauding your great efforts.

Creative Writing	Media Related Work	Visual Work	Performances	Film Projects
Caro Berger: Creative writing exercise for "Eighteenth-Century Ethics and Animals"	Philipp Fidler: Challenging Utilitarianism - The Depiction of Torture in LOST Created in the context of Ethical and Cultural Responses to 9/11 and the "War on Terror"	Christina Weiler: Semantic Analysis of Patience Abbabi's "Accidentally Falling" Created in the context of Poetry and Poetic Metaphor	Performance of Gender Benders: Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues and Gloria Steinem's If Men Could Menstruate with Berny Marx, Greta Olson, Miriam Remy, and Sandra Sigel	Julia Parise and Helen Lengert: "Wir lebten, und das war wichtig" (Handout, Video 1, Video 2 ) Created in the context of Literary and Cultural responses to 9/11 and the “War on Terror”
Angeley Eckardt: Creative writing exercise for "The Drama of Injustice"	Magnus Nissel: The Ever-ticking Bomb: Examining 24's Promotion of Torture against the Background of 9/11 Created in the context of Literary and Cultural responses to 9/11 and the “War on Terror”	Stephanie Ott: World in Chains Created in the context of American Punitivity: The Desire to Punish	Performance of Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom directed by Eduard Martens Created in the context of The Drama of Injustice