Project One: Campus Locations
Think back to your first encounters with Eastern Michigan University: a fall visit with your parents, perhaps, or a weekend with an older brother or sister already here, or the promotional brochures you received in the mail, or surfing EMU's website. Maybe you've known campus for many years, having grown up near the campus.
As in any first meeting, you jumped to conclusions, made comparisons, judged the architecture and greenery and layout of the campus, liked or didn't like the student guide, liked or didn't like others on your tour. You formed impressions—some through conversation, others through your own perspective on what you saw. You also had questions—what are classes like? how hard will they be? is it really a party school? will I get to pick my dorm? will I be happy here? will I fit in? is this the right place for me? how do I know?
Then opening weekend came and went, and you started to settle into a routine. If you commute, you figured out how long it takes to get to campus, where to park, what routes are best for you. For those on campus, amid the chaos of meeting your roommates, getting unpacked, figuring out your schedule, locating classroom buildings, going to a party or two, you, too, reached more preliminary conclusions. You started to feel at ease (or not), to make friends (or at least find a group to go to dinner with), and to form a deeper understanding of this place. You started to notice too places where you felt more comfortable or more invited or safer than other places—that is, as always, you noticed the geographies of inclusion and exclusion.
Finally, recall the campus maps of the imagination sketch you created on the first day of class. Everyone's sketches are available for you to browse online. Perhaps your imagined sense of the campus landscape has shifted in the early weeks of the new semester. Think of the sketch you made as a reference point—a resource and form of evidence—for you to work from as you begin to think about how well you know this place.
Writing Assignment
"The geography of a campus and the architecture of its buildings, then, are projections or products of a prevailing imagination, and in turn, they help to reproduce imagination (assumptions about what is good and bad, what should be done, what can be done, and how things should be carried out)"
Johnathon Mauk, College English, "Location, Location, Location"
For now, and for this first project, you will explore the geography of EMU—its buildings, its layout, its social atmospheres, its patterns of inclusion and exclusion—as a first-year student, new to the campus, ever changing in your perceptions. For example,
- You might study your dining hall at different times of the day and when you are alone and when you are with a group.
- You might contrast large and small classes, or classes that are only first year students and those with a more mixed constituency.
- You might look at how interactions occur across gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and ability among students in class, in dorms, in recreation areas, in the Student Center, etc.
- You might trace the walking paths you have already developed as you move through your days and nights.
- You might look at the architecture in terms of power—which buildings seem more important. How, exactly, do you recognize that?
- You might consider the hypothesis the library or some other building is a 'non-place'—that is, a transition space, a space that students and faculty move through as they get books or find references or use the computers - and compare that with other possible non-places.
- You might compare and contrast images of EMU from its promotional brochures or online materials with what you have already seen in dorms and classrooms.
- You might examine the layout of sidewalks, parking lots, stairways, elevators, etc. for assumptions about movement and access to various areas on campus.
- You might analyze "authorized" and "unauthorized" writing spaces on campus for how they reflect and/or reinforce explicit and implicit rules (what can or can't be written or "said") of particular spaces.
- You might analyze how your dorm RA produces a particular kind of place using bulletin boards and activities.
- You might investigate the 'architecture' of the general education curriculum and analyze what it tells you about the practices and knowledges that EMU values.
- You might explore where first-year students feel at home when on campus and why.
To prepare further for this project, you will read and discuss an excerpt from the "Introduction" to Geographies of Exclusion by David Sibley.
You will invent ideas for your essay—that is, you will make observations, write descriptions, tell stories, look for patterns, and draw conclusions—by doing a number exercises in class and as homework. Feel free to visit the University Writing Center to discuss your ideas with a consultant, or for response, feedback, and advice on a draft.
A draft of the project (3 double-spaced pages, word processed, 12 point font) is due on Monday, September 24. Bring a paper copy with you to class. The finished project (4 double-spaced pages, word processed, 12 point font) on Wednesday, September 26.
Assessment Criteria
Your project will be assessed for its strengths in the following five areas.
- Reading critically
- Practicing research
- Writing and representing what you know
- Using evidence
- Following the conventions of syntax and mechanics
Evaluation Criteria
Each criterion listed above will be evaluated on the following scale:
<NA----------NI----------AC----------EX>
EX: Exceptional. The writer has applied the criterion with distinction.
AC: Acceptable/meets expectations. The writer has applied the criterion to a satisfactory degree.
NI: Needs improvement. The writer has minimally applied the criterion in the project.
NA: Not applied. The writer has not applied the criterion in the project.
Contact Information
Derek N. Mueller, PhDProfessor
Department of English
Virginia Tech
Office: 315 Shanks Hall
Phone: +1-734-985-0485 (Google voice)
dmueller@vt.edu
http://derekmueller.net/rc/
