Assignments
ARE.NA POSTS
The majority of class assignments are weekly posts to Are.na, our our shared class repository. Are.na posts are called “blocks.” Every week through midterm presentations you are required to post two blocks:
The only exceptions are for Tuesday 1/9 (no WIP due) and Thursday 2/1 (weekly dossier superseded by midterm presentations and accompanying dossier submission; see next section for more details).
1. Work-in-Progress [Due Tuesday @ 9am]
A simple visualization (either in a specified file format or screenshot) from the week’s exercise, with a very short (< 300 words) textual accompaniment. Each lab or studio assignment will require a slightly different written response that asks you to describe, explain, and/or reflect on the data, technique, and workflow.
2. Weekly Dossier [Due Thursday @ 9am]
In about 300-500 words, reflect on the geo-story with special attention on the relationship to spatial media. Note that these posts are designed to help you begin to develop materials for your final group project, which will be structured around the themes and questions below.
Instead of a conventional reading reflection, in the investigative spirit of the course, your “dossier” should compile key information about the following elements:
The majority of class assignments are weekly posts to Are.na, our our shared class repository. Are.na posts are called “blocks.” Every week through midterm presentations you are required to post two blocks:
- A post showing lab work-in-progress (WIP), posted Tuesday morning before lab
- A “dossier” analyzing that week’s readings, posted Thursday morning before class
The only exceptions are for Tuesday 1/9 (no WIP due) and Thursday 2/1 (weekly dossier superseded by midterm presentations and accompanying dossier submission; see next section for more details).
1. Work-in-Progress [Due Tuesday @ 9am]
A simple visualization (either in a specified file format or screenshot) from the week’s exercise, with a very short (< 300 words) textual accompaniment. Each lab or studio assignment will require a slightly different written response that asks you to describe, explain, and/or reflect on the data, technique, and workflow.
2. Weekly Dossier [Due Thursday @ 9am]
In about 300-500 words, reflect on the geo-story with special attention on the relationship to spatial media. Note that these posts are designed to help you begin to develop materials for your final group project, which will be structured around the themes and questions below.
Instead of a conventional reading reflection, in the investigative spirit of the course, your “dossier” should compile key information about the following elements:
- Agent (Who/what)
- Who or what are the key protagonists and antagonists in the geo-story? What kinds of material, spatial, and historical changes are they responsible for? How are they represented by different forms of spatial media (maps, images, data visualizations, etc?)
- Be specific and focus on both discrete human and non-human agents. Examples might include an organization like the EPA, a corporation like General Iron, or non-human entities like mussels, carp, plastic pellets/microplastics, steel slag, coal/petcoke, pigs/industrial livestock, bison, corn/maize
- Landscape (Where)
- Where are these agents? What kinds of landscapes do they inhabit and traverse? What are the key characteristics, elements, other inhabitants, and other defining features of that landscape? What is the scale of that landscape? A small habitat for a particular animal population? An urban neighborhood? A watershed? A railway, highway median, or river? What other landscapes is it connected to?
- Evidence (When/How)
- How do we know about an agent in a landscape? What material traces does it leave behind? How do we sense or interact with those traces? How does this evidence give us a narrative of change or transformation?
- Choose some image/piece of “evidence” as the cover image for your block. This image should not featured in the geo-story or media piece from that week. It could be archival (a map, photograph, illustration, etc), a contemporary map or data visualization, a screenshot of a relevant video/film, and so on. Provide a brief caption describing what it is, where you found it, and why you chose it.
- Whatever you choose, make sure it is 1) well-sourced and 2) properly cited. Even if you find an image via a Google Image search, Pinterest, or on Are.na, you still need to track down the original source. While we encourage you to explore images in the public domain, do not use generic stock images! We’ve posted several excellent resources for finding these kinds of media in the Resources channel on Are.na, so please spend some time exploring it!
- Data
- What kinds of spatial and quantitative data are used in the geo-story and media? What do those data represent? How are they made? When were they made, and what time periods do they cover? Is there a particular spatial/temporal resolution? Where do they come from, and how are they used?
Block Formatting
For all blocks, follow these basic conventions:
Title all your blocks with the week ## and a simple but descriptive title. That could be as straightforward as the author-date citation for the reading.
Your title should look something like this:
WK01: The “Golden Spike” In the block description, always include a full bibliographic note (in Chicago style of course) for any media, texts, or data cited, and make sure to include a link or page # when appropriate.
MIDTERM SUBMISSION: “CHANGE AGENT” DOSSIER
Your midterm assignment is to synthesize your weekly dossiers and lab work into a single, expanded “Change Agent” dossier. This dossier will structure the original geo-story you will develop with a group for the final project, and will also help us group anyone not yet working in a group.
Feel free to choose something you’ve already written about or choose something new.
Dossier Requirements
Your dossier submission should include the following:
- Agent
- Choose a non-human entity (living or non-living) to focus your investigation.
- Consider the “feral entities” from Tsing et al. as appropriate examples
- Landscape
- Your agent’s imagined “habitat,” i.e., a place that hangs together through a spatial scale defined by a landscape feature (e.g., a watershed) and/or web of relations between human and non-human agents
- Evidence
- Archival media/images (1-3)
- Historic map(s) (1-3)
- Data
- Key dataset(s) (1-3) from labs or other sources that show evidence in a geospatial form, with appropriate contextual information (see Weekly Dossier posts for examples)
Post your dossier in the “dossiers” channel on Are.na. You may follow the same formatting guidelines as the weekly dossier (see the example we posted in Week 01) or upload a document formatted in a style of your choosing (i.e., a PDF, a link to something you’ve created elsewhere online, etc).