Assignment One: Multi-textual Presentation

The assignment allows students to work in small groups engaging collaboration and creative play to re-embody aspects of “A Creative Protest” and put it in conversation with other texts to create an original message.

Learning Objectives:
1. Exploring how the ideas in “A Creative Protest” connects to one other social movement, organization, and/or activist action that engages/d with race and justice.
2. Exploring how the language in “A Creative Protest” connects to one other social movement, organization, and/or activist action that engages/d with race and justice.
3. Exploring how combining existing texts can form new texts.
4. Engaging in creative play using multiple texts including “A Creative Protest.”

Preparation:
Read and analyze “A Creative Protest” and discuss your analysis with the small group. “A Creative Protest” is the foundational text that will be used to create a 10 to 12 minute presentation about the intersection of race and justice in a contemporary issue, event, organization, or social movement. This intersection could be in the form of a media artifact, an organization or aspect of an organization, social movement or aspect of a social movement, activist action such as a protest or other campaign, or another
phenomenon as approved by the instructor. The group will then identify an informative or persuasive goal, an intended audience, develop a format, create a manuscript, practice, and present what you create. The group should choose an audience that may or may not be the classroom audience. In other words, they could choose an intended audience and perform their work as if they were speaking to that group. For example, you may choose to create a civil rights history lesson for a class of third graders, a presentation on environmental racism for a neighborhood, or a persuasive speech to convince a veterans’ organization to support specific legislation.

Necessary items:
Selections from “A Creative Protest”
Three to four other texts regarding the phenomenon being presented on
A visual presentation format

Requirements for the presentation:
1. The texts must be edited and recombined in a new format. You may not simply re-present the speech or any other texts in their entirety. You must innovate the presentation in some way. However, you must leave the parts of the speech you use in tact.
2. You may not violate the spirit of the speech with the words of the speech. In other words, if you are advocating for radical action that includes the possibility of violent resistance, you may not use the calls for nonviolent resistance as an incitement to violence.

3. You must put this text in conversation with three to four other texts. For this project, texts are any material artifact of critical and creative thought that include words such as essays, poems, song lyrics, magazine articles, blogs, etc.
4. No more than 2 minutes of your presentation may be pre-recorded.
5. Every group member should have an active role during the presentation, including at least 2 minutes of speaking per person.
6. You must include at least one presentational aid such as PowerPoint, Prezi, short film, etc. YouTube videos must fall under fair use practices, and must be prepared so that the audience does not have to watch any ads or filter other visual noise to get the message of the video.
7. Musical accompaniment without lyrics is welcome, but does not substitute for a text.

Other requirements:
1. You may use your script during the presentation in accordance with the expectations for manuscript speaking.
2. You must submit a clean copy of the script and the associated bibliography (one per group) and the process paper (one per person).
3. One group member must ensure that the instructor has a copy of any visual presentation or link to the visual presentation for your project.
4. After all of the presentations are complete each of you will complete a brief reflection paper where you evaluate your contribution, and the contributions of your group mates.