Assignment 2: Strategies and Assignments A. Group Project / Collaborative Learning During the first two weeks of the semester, we will collectively generate an atlas of controversies involving architecture and its history. Part 1: Introduction and topic selection (3 days) - Review the project assignment. - Read the required text: Aggregate, Governing by Design: Architecture, Economy, and Politics in the 20th Century (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012): Introduction, esp. vii-x. - Watch the lecture video on microhistory and the event. - For further context, read the recommended text: Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It,� Critical Inquiry 20:1 (Autumn 1993): 10-35. - Recruit a partner from among your fellow students. You might want to do this directly, or you can connect by posting a short description of your goals and a couple of topic preferences for this project to the discussion board and taking it from there. - With your partner, develop a ranked list of five preferences drawn from among the controversies on the potential topic list or from your own knowledge base. - Use the Google Form on Blackboard to post your list of preferences. - Explore some of the multimedia work at Zeega and sign up for the service. Part 2: Research + annotated bibliography (4 days) - Once your topic is confirmed, develop an annotated bibliography of research resources useful for understanding the topic. Aim to identify 5-10 sources, including at least one each from the following categories: o A journalistic account from a newspaper, magazine, or blog. o An encyclopedia entry. o A scholarly article published in an academic journal. o A source for a plan, a map, and/or other orthographic documentation of the controversy site. o A video or audio file. - Use the template provided to format your bibliography. For each source, provide complete bibliographic reference, a link (scan and upload any offline sources via Issuu or a similar file-sharing / publication site), and a short paragraph summarizing the thesis and nature of the source along with the key insights you have taken away from the piece. - Write a one-paragraph summary of the controversy. - Submit your annotated bibliography + summary via Blackboard. - Watch the Zeega tutorial to get a feel for how the interface works. Part 3: Report (5 days) - Drawing on your research and the feedback on your bibliography + summary, make a multimedia report that describes the controversy and interprets the role of architecture in it. - Use the template provided to compile your report, including the following elements: o Heading providing basic identifying information on the controversy. o A text of 1000-1500 words concisely describing the controversy from multiple points of view, identifying the role of architecture in the it, and posing the questions for further research that your work has raised. o 4-6 relevant images, each accompanied by a caption and source credit. o A Zeega of +/- 3 minutes that embeds your interpretation of the controversy in a spatial representation of the relevant site(s) and building(s). o Latitude, longitude, and date coordinates to georeference the controversy in space and time. - Use the appropriate Google Form to submit your report.
B. Forum Building on the set of controversy reports you’ve generated, we will explore the insights about architecture and its history that emerge from the research. -
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Use the online map on the course website to explore the range of controversies that your classmates have analyzed. On the discussion board, share three principles or ideas that you’ve taken away from the controversy analyses, referring to specific reports in the course of your discussion. Comment on the postings of your classmates, and feel free to use substantive replies (rather than a post starting a new thread) to share your own three principles. Use the appropriate Google Form to vote for the reports that you find: o Most informative o Most interesting o Funniest o Best use of Zeega o Most detailed o Most provocative On [date TBD], sign in to Adobe Connect Pro to participate in a symposium exploring the results of the poll and discussion board conversations, and identifying ways that we could build on them to ask and answer deeper questions about architecture, politics, and history.