Requirements + Assignments

Our course description was written a full year ago, months before I joined the faculty and began planning this course 😬 Some of the assignments listed in that original description — which included reading responses; an annotated bibliography or course syllabus; a Society for Cinema and Media Studies methods-focused conference paper; and a final research paper, grant proposal, or multimodal submission — aren’t such a great fit for the course I’ve designed for you. So, I’ve modified a few of these assignments to better match the structure of the course, which is shaped in part by the CIMS colloquium, and to better reflect what you should reasonably expect yourself to have accomplished after a semester of methodological exploration 🙂 

The “workload” for these modified assignments should be no greater than that for the original set, and the “new model” actually gives you some more time to allow ideas to marinate before committing to a plan in a formally structured paper or proposal. That said, if you would prefer to adhere to the original set of assignments, please speak with me; we’ll work together to devise a customized schedule for you. 

IN-CLASS WORK

OUT-OF-CLASS WORK

Via Present & Correct; used with permission

ATTENDANCE, ENGAGEMENT, AND COLLEGIALITY   

Our class is a mix of seminar and workshop, and its success depends on your regular attendance and reliable engagement as a constructive colleague. I strive to create an inclusive, accommodating classroom – one that’s responsive to students’ competing demands, disparate backgrounds, varying styles of learning, and particular access needs, etc. –  that should enable (and, I hope, incentivize!) all of you to attend and engage. 

What does it mean to “attend” and “engage collegially”?

  • It means showing up on time to scheduled class, group, and individual meetings;
    • Absences: While I hope you’ll all be able to join us every week, everyone gets two free absences, no questions asked. Again, I simply request that you please notify me of your absence in advance, if you can, via email so I can plan group activities accordingly. Any absences in excess of two will impact your attendance grade. If you miss four or more classes, I’ll advise you to withdraw in order to avoid a failing grade. Please note that absences include missed individual and small group meetings, as well as those days you might miss at the beginning of the semester because of late registration. 
    • Catching Up: If you do need to miss a class, please do your best to catch up via the course documentation on our class website and through your classmates. If these resources prove insufficient, you’re welcome to chat with me during office hours. 
  • It means making your best effort to complete the readings, screenings, and exercises in advance of each class session; please see “About the Readings, Screenings, and Listening Exercises” 
  • It means doing your best to honor assignment deadlines; please see our Deadline Policy; 
  • It means communicating with the instructor about any pedagogical obstacles or personal challenges you’re facing, so we can work collaboratively to design accommodations;
    • Accommodations: While I’m happy to work with you to tailor the class’s content and assignments to your interests, and to help you develop strategies for project planning and time management – and while I aim to be sympathetic to any challenges you might face both inside and outside the classroom – I ask that you please also respect my time and acknowledge my load of responsibilities. I can’t allow expectations for accommodation to compromise my own health.
  • It means being prepared to engage constructively and respectfully with your colleagues. Your contributions during class can take a number of forms, depending upon your strengths and preferences and the day’s varying demands and stresses [I’m indebted here to Max Liboiron]:
    • You could contribute to our in-class discussions, while also monitoring the power of your voice and ensuring that others have room to contribute, too;
    • You could contribute to collaborative note-taking;
    • You could help with timekeeping by marking our progress through the day’s agenda, or by ensuring that student presentations proceed on pace, leaving no one short-shrifted!;
    • You could write the creators of any of the texts or projects we examine this semester to let them know why you appreciate their work (please cc me!);
    • You could offer some form of mutual aid to your classmates or propose another means of building intellectual camaraderie
  • It means sharing our commitment to Inclusion and Respect. 

GUEST LIAISING

Sign up for one week: September 20, October 25, November 15, or November 29 

In lieu of weekly reading responses, each of you is invited to sign up to serve as a part of a team of student interlocutors for one of our four guests, who will have shared their work in the CIMS Colloquium at noon before our class. The “pedagogical purpose” for this activity is four-fold: (1) your teams will help to ensure that each of our guests has an engaged, informed group of interlocutors — a means of practicing intellectual hospitality; (2) your team will help to ensure that our discussion is focused-yet-organic (which makes for a good interview!), inclusive, and representative of varied student interests; and (3) your participation allows you to practice interviewing and thinking on the fly as part of a supportive group. These skills have lots of applications: you’ll likely find yourself playing host/interviewer/discussant at academic and professional conferences, in the classroom, at studio critiques, and in myriad other contexts. Plus, finally, you’ll get to enjoy a free meal and good conversation, which might yield another benefit: (4) networking opportunities (and sustenance) 🤝🍔😉

Remember: you don’t have to stick to the subject and intellectual “substance” of the work. You can ask practical questions about method and process – like, where’d you get that idea?, how did you fund that?, how did you recruit participants?, how did you structure your collaboration?, etc.

I imagine “being a good host” feels intuitive to some of you, but if it would be helpful to have more structure, you might try this:  

  1. Before class: read the guest’s work closely, and maybe do a bit of additional background research on their practice; consult with your team members about where your individual interests intersect with the guest’s work; identify shared concerns or curiosities to shape your list of potential topics to address with our guest in class; and draft an “introduction” that supplements and personalizes the guest’s formal bio with some complimentary comments from your group; 
  2. At the start of class, before our guest arrives: lead our preparatory discussion, with my assistance, where we recap the noon colloquium, tie in the assigned readings, and develop a plan for engaging with our guest;
  3. During the guest’s visit: introduce them and lead the discussion! (In Dr. Pybus’s case, the discussion will likely come after her in-class workshop);
  4. Join us for a free dinner and good conversation either the evening before or after class! Dinner attendance is optional but encouraged 🙂 
Via Zak Jensen; used with permission

PROJECT SKETCHES + ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Due Monday September 25 @ noon 

I’m asking for these submissions on a Monday because we’ll be workshopping your projects in class on Wednesday, September 27. I’ll need time to review and comment on everyone’s work, then prepare for the in-class conversation. You’re of course welcome to submit your work early, if you like! 

Here’s where you start to map out your course for the semester. You’re submitting this preliminary proposal relatively early in the term so your classmates and I can provide targeted assistance to each of you in the following weeks, and so we can plan future classes to respond to shared student needs and concerns. The assignment is called a “sketch” because it’ll inevitably be preliminary and partial — at this stage, the point is to get feedback! — but your submission should still reflect serious, careful thought and editing. 

Your final project could take a variety of forms: an article; a draft grant/thesis/dissertation proposal, a proposal for a research-based multimodal project (e.g., a documentary film, an exhibition, a Digital Humanities project, etc.), a syllabus (which should comprise much more than a list of readings!), or another research-informed format that we discuss and agree upon. 

Please submit via Google Docs (in edit-able form, i.e., no pdfs), a ~600-word, double-spaced project “sketch” in which you…

  1. describe your proposed research topic or question; 
  2. explain its academic, creative, public and personal significance, relevance, timeliness, etc.; 
  3. identify your desired mode of publication or dissemination (i.e., what form will your project take?);
  4. identify your audience(s)/public(s)/interlocutor(s)/stakeholder(s); and 
  5. describe briefly your preliminary list of potential methods (of course our goal this semester is to refine and expand your methodology, and this preliminary list of methods will likely be partial — but it at least gives us a starting point, and it helps me understand what expectations you’re bringing to the class 🙂 

Append an annotated bibliography listing at least five related resources — mostly scholarly work, but also, optionally, one popular press (e.g., edited but not peer-reviewed) or research-based media production / creative project — that have engaged with your topic. Provide for each source a ~150-word annotation briefly summarizing the article’s argument and methods (please do not use AI for this; I want to know what you think!), and offering your own assessment of the value of those methods for your research. 

Next Steps: If you choose to develop a grant/thesis/dissertation proposal or write an article for your final project, you’ll need to provide a literature review and/or environmental scan, which demonstrates that you have a big-picture understanding of the existing resources and the nature of ongoing debate in your field, as well as how your proposed work fits in. Over the following weeks, you can expand and transform your annotated bibliography into a literature review. See my guide on “The Literature Review / Mediagraphy,” and Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams, “From Problems to Sources” and “Engaging Sources” in The Craft of Research, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2008): 68-101.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP

September 27 

In the days leading up to our September 27 class, we’ll prepare a collaborative slideshow on Google Slides. Each of you will be allocated seven slides: a title slide; a slide for each of the five elements of your project sketch; and a wildcard slide to use however you want 🙂 You’re welcome to incorporate images and experiment with design, if you like! When you share your work in class, you’ll each have five minutes to synopsize your project, leaving significant time for feedback.

At the end of class, we’ll talk about how to build and translate your annotated bibliographies into literature reviews – and how that synthetic work can help you more critically assess your theoretical and methodological options.

METHODS TOOLKIT

Lots of existing cinema and media studies methods textbooks are expensive, published by highly profitable commercial academic publishers, and focused on one thread — social scientific, humanistic, or artistic — of media studies’ heterogeneous genealogies. Given the value of media studies in addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems — from disinformation and conspiracy to the rise of fascism and the decline of local news — and given the curricular and funding challenges facing schools and universities in many parts of the country and around the world, the critical tools of our field should be common resources. We’ll be talking this semester about open-access and multimodal scholarship, and the values undergirding those pursuits. I hope we can put those principles into practice this semester by building the foundation for our own open-access, multimodal Media Studies Methods Toolkit, supported by PennLibraries, and co-authored by all of you! Ideally, future CIMS Methods classes will build on our work, and we can welcome contributions from folks in Annenberg and other departments and divisions.

We’ll look at a number of existing textbooks and handbooks to discern what’s missing and what we can add. We’ll speak with PennLibraries’ Cosette Bruhns Alonso early in the semester about the appropriate platform (update: we’ve chosen Scalar) to host our project, and, collectively, we’ll decide on a format and a flexible entry “template.” All of this work will happen in class. Each of you will then be invited to submit one short, creative, illustrated entry on methods (broadly conceived) of your choice. We want to reimagine the textbook and toolkit as media genres and material forms; think capaciously and interdisciplinarily about method; recognize, remix, and contextualize existing resources; add our own voices and exercise judgment. We need to consider what methodological variables and values matter beyond epistemological “fit.” What other factors merit inclusion: particular methods’ carbon footprint, historically unjust applications, how well they lend themselves to collaboration? 

You’ll find our template here and Dr. Bruhns Alonso’s Scalar instructions here.

We’ll set aside some time in class to work on this. We’ll be discussing and workshopping your contributions on October 11 and November 15, and your near-final drafts (edited and proofread, with all images, videos, and other media embedded!) are due, via Google Docs, on Tuesday, November 21 @ 5pm. You’re of course welcome to submit sooner, if you like! I’ll offer feedback over the holiday, and you can make your final revisions any time before your final projects are due, on Friday, December 8 at 5pm.  If you’d like to share your project as part of our public, open-access Methods Toolkit, you’ll post it on Scalar; if you’d rather not share your work publicly, you can simply submit your final revision to me via Google Docs. Because Penn’s legal counsel has thwarted our Scalar plans, we’ll discuss if — and if so, how — we want to share our work publicly. If you’d rather not make your work public, you’re welcome to submit your final draft to me via Google Docs. 

Via Present & Correct; used with permission

PROGRESS REPORT

Due Sunday October 29 @ 5pm

In lieu of a class meeting on November 1, I’ll be meeting with you individually to discuss your progress, to address challenges you’re facing, to map out future plans, etc. These progress reports will help me prepare for those conversations. I recognize that a Sunday evening due date isn’t ideal, and I don’t mean to invade your weekend; I simply want to give you as much time as possible to complete the assignment, while also giving me sufficient time to review everyone’s work before we meet. You’re welcome to submit your work early — say, the preceding Friday — if you like!

Please submit via Google Docs (in edit-able form, i.e., no pdfs), a 1500- to 2100-word, double-spaced progress report that includes / addresses the following:

  • an updated project description and/or research questions;
  • a draft literature review (no more than 600 words, including at least 10 sources, ž of which should be scholarly)…
    • Or… if you’re not yet ready to synthesize your research into a literature review, or if your project format doesn’t necessitate one, a thematically organized annotated bibliography (again, at least 10 sources, mostly scholarly, with roughly 75- to 100-word annotations for each) reflecting broader secondary source research. If you choose the annotated bibliography option, your complete proposal will be closer to the 2100-word end of the word count.
      • Why thematically organized? Because, as is required with a literature review, this is the point where you should be finding patterns in the material you’re reviewing: particular resources that help you understand particular critical concepts; others that help you understand different critical concerns; still others that help you understand, say, methods well suited for the particular medium or venue or geographic region you’re writing about, etc. You can group your resources appropriately and provide a little heading that identifies what unites them.
      • Why is the annotated bibliography longer than the lit review? Because a lit review is a distillation, a crystallization, a condensation, a pattern-mapping of the resources pertinent to your project. It’s actually a greater challenge to write a shorter, more concentrated review than it is to create a list; it requires knowing your material well enough to sort it and compress it 😉
    • For both the lit review and annotated bibliography, you’re welcome to integrate resources you used in your project sketch last month.
  • a discussion of the mixture of methods that seems most appropriate for your project, and why. What does each offer, and how do they complement one another?;
  • a discussion of the scale(s) at which you’ll conduct your research: global, continental, national, regional, urban, neighborhood, household, individual, etc. If you’re dealing with collections or flows of media content or data, what will be the scope of your analysis? How will you sample your population, environment, or collection? If you opt for a case study, how will you choose your case(s)? What are the political implications of your choices?;
  • a list of the ethical questions or concerns you might encounter in executing your project; and a discussion of how you might incorporate reflexivity into your work.

FINAL PRESENTATION

December 6

We’ll dedicate our last class to final presentations, the format of which we’ll determine in the preceding weeks. We might organize a mini-conference, a salon, a science fair, a series of peer interviews, etc. More information to come. 

FINAL PROJECT

Please submit your work >> via this Google Form! << by Friday, December 8, end-of -day!

What you ultimately submit will of course depend upon the format of your project. In our individual consultations we can determine the scope and shape of your work. In general, text-based projects should be roughly 4500 words, submitted via Google Docs (in edit-able form, i.e., no pdfs). 

Here are some additional, format-specific guidelines. If your chosen format isn’t on this list, let’s talk 🙂

Please note: if you’d like to use this class to begin executing your research – that is, to move beyond proposing toward implementing some of the methods you’ve proposed – you’re welcome to do so, and I’m happy to provide assistance. Yet it’s still in your best interest to spend some time developing a thoughtful, thorough research proposal, for a number of reasons:

  • because you’ll need to know how to write good proposals in order to get your foot in the door: to get your dissertation proposal approved, to secure funding or a fellowship, etc.
  • because it’s very common to underestimate the value of planning; many students jump prematurely into execution without posing meaningful research questions or establishing end goals;
  • because the time you spend writing proposals isn’t deferring “the real work”; proposal-writing is research. Proposal-writing incites and frames the initial stages of your research, it provides purpose and momentum to your work, and it gives you an opportunity to get feedback — to identify bugs or ethical quandaries, to integrate methods that hadn’t initially occurred to you — before you unleash your work on the world.