8 Adaptable classroom exercises from “Writing About Labor”
Here are two exercises, referenced in the previous section, that my students and I used during our research. The first prompt is adapted, with gratitude, from UVA Instructional Design Librarian Bethany Mickel.
Archive journal 1
I’ve assigned each of you a year from UVA’s history, and I’d like you to investigate that year by looking at an issue of Corks & Curls, UVA’s yearbook. You can find your assigned year in the Handouts folder, where there’s a document called “Corks and Curls.”
Please look through the whole issue and try to get a sense of what was going on, and then record a short video response documenting your findings and your reaction. The idea here is to express your ideas in a conversational manner, gathering your organic reactions to what you find, rather than worrying too much about format. Before you begin reading, here are some suggestions for how you might approach this research project.
1. Choose a question to investigate. This will help you focus your reading, rather than getting overwhelmed by a profusion of interesting details. There are many lenses through which you could try to understand what was happening in the past. I’m always curious what people in the past thought was funny, and why, because that often tells us a lot (especially when it doesn’t quite make sense). You could also look out for controversies: what were people upset about? And then there’s the fascinating question of fashion. What did people wear? What was cool? Having such a question in mind will make it easier to gather some concrete details.
2. Jot down some thoughts as you read. You’ve chosen a question; now try and answer it! When you come across details that seem relevant and interesting, take a screenshot or type some notes. Pay attention, too, to how it feels to encounter these fragments of past lives. What surprises you? What moves you? If you find yourself feeling angry, what angers you?
3. Write a rough draft of talking points. Once you’ve finished reading, collect your thoughts. What’s your general answer to your question, and what evidence can you reference to support it? This shouldn’t be a script of every last word you’ll say, just an outline of the highlights you want to make sure you mention.
4. Find a relatively quiet place to record. Try and pick a spot where there are few distractions and not much additional noise.
5. Relax and record! Use the interface on this page to record yourself speaking. The goal here isn’t perfection, just an articulation of your thoughts in your own voice. Aim for 2-3 minutes of video, though that’s a suggestion rather than a firm requirement.
6. Do a quick quality check. Watch your video before submitting. Again, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but if it’s inaudible or there’s some other big problem, you might consider doing a second take. Then, submit your work!
I didn’t share the second prompt until the end of the semester, because I didn’t want my students to record their archive journals with the knowledge that they would be rewatching and writing about them later.
Final reflection
I’d like to hear from each of you about the process of creating your gallery space. And when I say “process,” I mean the whole process, going all the way back to February.
Here’s what I’d like you to do:
Please rewatch all of the archive journals you filmed for this class. Watch them in order, starting with #1 (Corks & Curls) and proceeding all the way to #5 (questions for President Ryan). Then, write an essay of four (4) double-spaced pages in which you reflect on the experience of learning to conduct and share archival research.
For your midterm essay, you interviewed your classmates about their experiences. For this essay, you might imagine that you’re interviewing yourself: as you watch these videos, take note of how the person onscreen seems to change over the course of a month. Give me concrete examples. How does their thinking develop? How does their perspective shift? Do they begin to speak in new ways, or to introduce new degrees of complexity as they discuss their experience? What’s the emotional texture of their video journals? Where do they seem most engaged? As you follow this person’s journey—which is, of course, your journey—does anything surprise you about what you see?
I’d also like you to reflect on the process of creating your gallery space. Tell me about your group’s choices of object selection and exhibition design, and tell me about the object for which you worked individually to write captions or make other curatorial choices.
And finally, I’d like to see you connect this account of your final project to the journey you’ve retraced via those archival videos. You might synthesize all this by answering the following question: how has the process of researching and documenting UVA’s Living Wage Campaign changed the way you feel when you sit in the classroom?
This essay is due via Canvas at the start of class on Monday, April 29.