Short Papers Proposals

General Information
Length: minimum 500 words; maximum: 750 words
Images: 1-2 (in the subtitles, include name, place, architect, year, and source/credit) Proposed
bibliography: 5-10 scholarly articles or books
Citation format: Chicago Manual of Style, Notes and Bibliography
Submission: February 27 (on Canvas), until 11:59pm.

Theme
Monumentality in Ancient and Pre-Modern Architecture

Objective
Write an essay discussing the origins of ancient, or pre-modern monumentality and its impact on
the construction of power, control, and collective memory. Select a few case studies (e.g.,
buildings) to support your argument.

Please make sure to include the two articles highlighted in the attached documents.
Three other scholarly articles can be retrieved from other sources or in the attached documents

In his review of Sherry Turkles book, Reclaiming Conversation, the novelist Jonathan Franzen points out that it is a call to arms. Franzen writes, Conversation is Turkles organizing principle because so much of what constitutes humanity is threatened when we replace it with electronic communication and Our rapturous submission to digital technology has led to an atrophying of human capacities like empathy and self-reflection, and the time has come to reassert ourselves, behave like adults and put technology in its place (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/books/review/jonathan-franzen-reviews-sherry-turkle-reclaiming-conversation.html). Analogous to the assignment for paper #3, this assignment asks you to elaborate on a set of arguments advanced in Turkles book either to support and strengthen Turkles arguments, or to argue against her.

To accomplish this assignment you will need not only to understand Turkles arguments, but also to analyze how she makes those arguments. What about Turkles writing makes her a strong advocate for the views she advances in Reclaiming Conversation?

According to Franzen, Turkles argument derives its power from the breadth of her research and the acuity of her psychological insight. The people she interviews have adopted new technologies in pursuit of greater control, only to feel controlled by them. I agree that some of Turkles rhetorical power comes from the evidence she parlays from the interviews she has conducted. But a close reading of any chapter of the book shows that citing her interviews is only one among several techniques she employs to substantiate her claims.

For example, sometimes she does not explicitly cite one of her interviewees, but claims more broadly that people tell me Laced throughout her book are citations to articles from the literature of social science (including from the fields of psychology, communications, psychiatry), brain science, and philosophy. She also relies on the popular science retold in news articles by journalists. This assemblage of very different citations are deployed, by Turkle, to make claims about we and you and broad categories of people much larger in size than the number of people she has interviewed and bigger than the groups studied by the researchers she cites.

For instance, she makes claims about what college students do or do not do, what they think, and how they handle their mobile devices. Her rhetorical skill is to give a small amount of anecdotal evidence or obliquely touch on a scientific article and then convincingly make claims about you and all of us and how digital media is harming the everyday institutions of the self, the family, work, romance, and public discourse. How does she do this in a convincing manner? How could it be done better? Or, how might one argue against the rhetoric she deploys for the class she makes?

Just a reminder: I use the term rhetoric as a term of art, not as it is usually used in everyday conversation to dismiss an argument as inflated or false. Rhetoric, in the academic sense, is simply a description of the means a speaker or writer uses to make their argument. In a nutshell, what I am asking for you to do is read Turkles text closely paying attention to both what her arguments are and her rhetoric, i.e., how she makes her arguments.

What to do

Turkles book is organized a specific passage from philosopher Henry David Thoreaus book Walden (1854) in the chapter Visitors where he writes, I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. Remember this is the same Thoreau who also wrote, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Thoreaus chairs are partly physical, partly metaphorical insofar as they refer to several social institutions: solitude, friendship, and society. Turkle uses the chairs to stand in for a similar set of social institutions: the self, family, friends, work, and the public. She also includes a fourth chair which she reserves for the activity/institution of talking to machines. For Turkle, the backbone of all of these institutions is the the set of recurrent conversations that people participate in to create and maintain family, friendship, etc.

For this paper, I would like you to (a) pick one of these social institutions; (b) closely read the chapter or chapters Turkle devotes to the institution and summarize the arguments Turkle makes about the institution and the influences digital media has on the institution; (c) gather all of the citations and evidence she brings to bear; (d) collect the words and phrasings she uses (the rhetorical devices she employs) to make her arguments; and (e) critique Turkles rhetorical means her citations, her phrasings, etc. and either use your critique to argue against her, or to strengthen her argument.

The end result of your work should read like a review of Turkles book, a close reading, a critique of her book with special emphasis on one of the set of conversations/institutions/chairs she examines in her book.

Field Research Essay

You can work alone or in groups of 2-3 (no more than 3). Your final project will consist of a ten- page academic research paper that includes a filmography and bibliography.

You may decide to carry out research on:
1. An event: a film festival; a special screening of a film; an art installation; an art exhibition that involves film; a film program at a museum or gallery or microcinema (CineCycle), a gaming hack a thon or workshop.

2. An individual, collective or group developing innovative approaches to cinema, game and media production, exhibition or distribution. (eg. Dames Making Games, Symposium at Toronto Media Art Centre, etc.)

3. An institution or organization devoted to cinema and media such as The Archives of Ontario; TIFF Bell Lightbox; HOT Docs cinema; etc.

Your final project must deal with contemporary practices. For example: You may do an analysis of a local filmmaker, game designer, media curator where you could include a biographical study, and look closely at a few of the projects each is involved in. This might include an interview that you can include with your paper and creative project. You may also investigate a technique, using several filmmakers as reference. We encourage you to go out into the field of Torontos creative industries. For this project you can attend and interview a festival programmer; or go to a public gallery where film or digital media is exhibited as and installation interview the artist. Field research involves detailed observation, so ensure you are recording your notes or where feasible, taking photos. A field research essay may involve some synthesis of theoretical sources for the purposes of contextual framing, relying on essays read for class but this should be minimal. The core of your essay should be thick description that is detailed and analyzed. Please see examples that are posted. 

Written Component

Use proper academic citation and include a filmography and bibliography. 2000-2500 words. (10 pages)

1.     Intro. Describe your subject and why you chose it. What is the significance of this person, place, event? How does this person/place/event figure in Toronto film cultures (ie. most important festival of experimental media).

2.     Background Research. Synthesize your background research (newspaper articles, essays, books, web searches).

3.     Methodology. In detail, describe your methodology (ie. On Oct 6th we interviewed A, a one hour interview in her office. We held a follow up phone interview on xxx date and conducted further interviews with her cinematographer and choreographer on xxx and xxx). Or, if you are conducting research into a film festival, your methodology would indicate when and where the festival happens, and provides an overview of the interviews you conducted and the nature of your field research (ie. attended a total of 10 screenings and 5 workshops, interviewed the director of the festival, the programming Director and 5 volunteers and ten audience members).

4.     The body of your essay will contextualize your field research and synthesize the interviews you conducted including actual quotes, where appropriate.

5.     Conclusion. Summarize what you have learned from your field research.

In an appendix, include your research questions.