From the syllabus: We’ll be meeting to talk about your dossiers (about which more below!) in-person. Please sign up for an appointment via Doodle.
You should be prepared to (1) briefly summarize and critically reflect on what you’ve discovered through your research – in particular, how your research topic(s) pertain to the themes of our class – and how you’ve sifted through and organized your research material; and (2) how that research informed the cartographic arguments you’ll be making. You’ll be signing up for 20-minute meetings during the week of November 16. The dossier and map are worth 20% of your final grade.
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Consider the dossier the collection of secondary and primary research material from which you’ve drawn to construct your map. It’s essentially your “multimodal” notebook or research database; it evidences all the “behind-the-scenes” work you’ve done that either has or hasn’t manifested itself on your map. The dossier could contain abstracts of relevant secondary sources you’ve read/viewed/listened to; scans of original documents you’ve discovered; clips of relevant photos, videos, audio recordings, etc., you’ve either collected or created; etc. It’s up to you to determine, depending upon the types of material you’ve been collecting and what system you’ve been using to collect it, how to best share this dossier with me. The dossier you submit need not be comprehensive; you can choose a representative sample of material that demonstrates the breadth of your research and that illustrates the emerging themes in your critical understanding of your research topics.
Ideally, you will have been maintaining your dossier throughout your research process. You should be thoroughly citing and annotating all your material. And you should be experimenting with various organizational schemes (thematic, formal, chronological, etc. – whichever schemes make most sense for your particular project and advance the “spatial argument” [you think] you want to make on the map).
With your dossier, you’ll be presenting a draft of your individual project map. This could be a sketch, an outline, a photo of your paper prototype — any format that reflects your thinking regarding the “spatialization” of your project.