4: Learning

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LEARNING ANALYSIS for Women, Art, and Culture [click the title link online to download a copy of this assignment] 

This is a synthetic reflection on the course and your place in it.  6-8 pgs printed out; compact is good! REDRAFTED AND EDITED VERSION TURNED IN AT THE END OF CLASS Tuesday, 8 DECEMBER. Hardcopy in class; electronic copies emailed to TA as well.
Credit given only with presence in class on the last, so be sure to be in class, no matter what!

SUMMARY OF GRADED SETS:
Experience set 1 Museums & set 2 Event, Definition Feminism in flyer and event = 1/3 grade
Experience set 3 Intersectional Zine Project = 1/3 grade

Experience set 4 Learning Analysis & Info Sheet = 1/3 grade


The learning analysis gives you an opportunity to talk about what the course has meant to you. It includes:

 (1) your description of the story of the course.

Examine the syllabus (course descriptions and requirements, the reading and writing assignments), websites and blog spaces, notes from class, any freewrites, lists and preps for class, imagining this information as elements in a story about women, art, and culture. How did the course begin? What questions did we start off with? How is the class constructed and what sorts of learning are fostered? How is the course divided into experiences? How would you name these? What does each set of experiences contribute to a story about Women, Art and Culture? You will be trying to analyze how the course was constructed, and why it was put together in this particular way. Pay special attention to titles for days in the Reading and Writing Assignment outline. Imagine them as titles in a Table of Contents to parts of a book and try to understand the story of the "book" of the course.

 (2) put yourself into this story.

What have we created together in our class, in participations in our large collective Tuesday meetings and in our smaller Thursday discussion groups, in project teams and partnerships? How are you a part of the story of the course as you understand it? What was happening with you at different points in the unfolding and building of this argument? Use freewrites and other notes to remind yourself what you were thinking at different points. Remember these are the time capsules your earlier self was saving for the future self that exists now. How did everything change for you? What changed them? What were your contributions to the class? What effects did you have on the course, on your partners? How did your responses to other people's work include you in the argument of the class? What worked especially well for you? Be sure to account for your absences from class, and talk about what you did to keep up and how you know that you got the stuff you missed. Make sure to include your experience in your Thursday discussion group, and to compare what you did and made happen yourself in that group and in the larger class.

 (3) discuss from the course three readings and a web site in addition to the class website, that especially connect you into the story of the class.
Choose readings which meant a lot to you, and web sites of substance that helped you think and connect. Demonstrate that you've kept up with the reading by showing how widely you've read in the course materials. Pick whole books as well as shorter pieces. Make a point of going beyond the same readings you used in the other assignments. How do these readings connect you to the story of the class? How did they affect you? What was meaningful and important about them? What did you learn from them? How did they change your relationship to the course, to ideas, issues, politics, feelings? You can talk about how your life was connected to these ideas and feelings. You can suggest relationships with other readings, other courses, other experiences.

 This is an exercise in synthesizing--putting things together in new relationships, making a whole shape. It requires imagination. Have fun with it. Good luck!

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