"Only connect! . . .Live in fragments no longer.” E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22
‘One
day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form
in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are
half-asleep, ‘Hammer* your thoughts into unity’.
For days I could think of nothing else and for years I tested all I did
by that sentence [...]” William Butler Yeats, Nobel Prize 1923 (cited
in Frank Tuohy, Yeats,
1976, p.51 )
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PROJECTS
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SUBJECTS, TOPICS
This semester we have an opportunity to be on the cutting edge of the new reading and writing. Those who choose to do so will be working together to some extent, contributing parts if not all of their projects to a joint project, rather like builders of the great monuments of the past: pyramids, temples, cathedrals, and centers of government. (Hence the extra relevance of one of our unifying symbols, the carpenter's hammer.) Unlike cathedral builders, however, each contributor will be named. You will have a chance for not only personal "immortality," therefore, but also that kind of awesome collective "immortality" embodied in the great monuments of the past. We will be working with students of the past and the future, and a graduate student in educational psychology, Alex Games, as well as the Center for Instructional Technology.
AND it will be more fun, because you will playing a video game, albeit an old-fashioned text-based quest explorer game with images and, if you wish, artificial intelligence, sound, video, animation, etc.
The game is housed in what is known as a MOO, a multi-player object-oriented game. "Object-oriented" in our case simply means we are able to create new spaces and characters.
The Center for Instructional Technology is supporting this project because it may help solve these pedagogical goals:
- Developing the ability of students to write about space, place, and personality.
- Increasing the students' knowledge of and connections to this campus and this town -- their own place, their second home, their alma mater.
- Developing the students' historical imaginations, freeing them to explore other places, other times.
- Conveying to a Texas-bound student the experience of other countries, especially their important places and buildings.
- Encouraging Texas students to access the radically different sense of time and history embodied in the architecture and customs of a culture of the Eastern hemisphere.
- Enabling Texas students to experience this semester a very different university experience, Oxford, with a thousand years of history.
- Inspiring students to feel the presence and support of their predecessors, the "ghosts" of the past associated with the places and spaces around them here and elsewhere.
- Technology's Role:
- To simulate places, spaces, and personalities as much as possible and to provide a platform for writing about them.
- Expected Outcome:
- A relatively permanent MOO architecture that can be used for many different literature, language, history, geography, and architecture classes.
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1. The first project is to be a contribution to the "building" we are constructing as a class in our cyberspace or MOO. (So get out your hammers.) It is to be an introduction to a place and/or a character associated with Oxford university or the university of Texas during the Victorian era. (You might begin with this incomplete list of Oxford alumni.) (You will have to do some initial research to determine if they were associated with Oxford during the Victorian era -- 1837-1901). If it is a character, you are to focus on how the spirit or legacy of that person is embodied in the campus as place. The two options may be described in this way:
a] DESCRIBE PLACES. Write a narrative text where a guide leads a tour of places that reveal the Victorian heritage of the University of Texas or Oxford. Integrate citations from our readings from either semester. UP TO 150 POINTS. (Extra points for multimedia.)
b] CREATE A CHARACTER, REWRITE OUR TEXTS
Write a descriptive text for a Victorian character, and for key places in his/her life. Use aspects of characters in our texts to create his/her personality and background and aspects of places in our texts to create his/her setting. Use the MOO object editor, if you can, to "write" the places your character inhabits. UP TO 175 POINTS. (Extra points for multimedia)
2a. The second project can be a continuation of the first, or an exploration of another person and/or place along the same lines. UP TO 150 POINTS.
2b. OR:
c] CREATE LIFE, OR AT LEAST A GHOST DRAMA.
Create a character “bot,” i.e. a ‘robot” who can interact “live” with others
in the MOO, providing it with responses it can give to certain questions
based on keywords. For example, you could write a conversation with
a famous Victorian associated with Oxford or the University of Texas.
Assign this personality to your bot (from now on called a ghost) and test
the conversation in the virtual world. UP TO 200 POINTS. (Extra points
for multimedia)
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STORYBOARD
The first step in project one is to create a storyboard of places and characters you would like to write about and choose where they would connect with the MOO as it stands now. Storyboards are usually quite visual, but in this case the emphasis is on your writing. Hence for this assignment the storyboard is more like a combination of a storyboard and an outline or prospectus. It will be the equivalent of the first page of your project. The only requirement is that the storyboard show how the project will result in six pages or more ( it can be as many as six different miniprojects).
RELATION TO OTHER PROJECTS ON THE MOO.
If your project is about persons or places nobody has put on the Moo yet and nobody wrote about last semester and you cannot see how your writing would connect at this point, don't worry about it: we will probably be able to find a way to connect it to the MOO.
If your project is about persons or places that have already been connected to the MOO you need to explain in your Storyboard how your project will fit in with its predecessors. As the preceding projects were not written specifically for the MOO you can propose changes in how they are presented in the MOO to make them fit in better with your project.
If your project overlaps with one or more projects from last semester on the list below** you need to suggest how those projects and your projects will be connected to the MOO.
Here are some of the Oxford Victorians and some of the Oxford places with important Victorian heritages (though they may be much older of course) already on the MOO that could be chosen:
Christ Church college and cathedral: ghosts: Lewis Carroll, John Ruskin, E. B. Pusey, etc Specific places at this college you might choose are the meadow (can be connected to Matthew Arnold via his poems "The Scholar Gypsy" and "Thysis")' the cathedral with stained glass by Morris and Burne-Jones; the Cherwell stream by the meadow which, along with the Thames, figures in Hopkins's poem "Duns Scotus's Oxford;" and the Thames also associated with Lewis Carroll and Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson .
Carfax, the Martyr's Memorial, Broad Street, Top of Sheldonian theatre, the busts of the "Emperors" guarding it, all connected to Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure
The Union Library associated with Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets
St. Michael's, where William Morris was married
Balliol College, home of Hopkins, Arnold, Swinburne, Jowett, etc. and associated with Browning, .....
Magdalen College, home Oscar Wilde
In addition to these associations many of the Oxford colleges have great Victorian buildings and thus the architects could be added to the Moo, such as Butterfield who did the chapel at Balliol, or Ruskin who inspired the University Museum, or .......
Some resources for University of Texas subjects
Campus and Austin Area Architecture and Nature Sites
Lewis Carroll does U. T. Austin
Thomas Hardy does U. T. Austin
Max Beerbohm does U. T. Austin
Oxford University subjects
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Previous student projects connecting U. T. and Oxford
CamOur Oxford Pictures site
Virtual Study Abroad,
esp. Oxford
Our
Primary Research Tool: the Victorian Web
PreRaphaelite Painting and Design
-----------------------------------------------------* * Projects from last semester not yet connected to the MOO:
E603A:
Merrell: C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, High Street, St. Johns St. #50, Oxford Union Library, University College, Magdalen, Keble, Eagle and Child pub, Sheldonian theatre and Emperors, Exeter,
Amie: Snow White: President Faulkner, President’s Office, Parlin 104 (our classroom), Bump ranch, the Drag, Atomic Tattoo, webspace, Evil Empire
Ashlie: Carroll: Scottish Rite Dormitory, Tower, University Co-op, UGL, fountain in front of the Union,
Chris: Melville
Jason: Salinger: Bevo,frat party, roomate, Congress Bridge bats, Jester Beach, Taniguchi Gardens, Three Wise Men statue by Barton Springs, Sullivan's on Colorado St., Biology ponds, Texas Memorial Museum, the Tower, Littlefield Fountain, Business school
Katie: Carroll: Waller Creek, Bevo, frat house, Co-op, Biology Ponds, the Union, the West Mall, the Tower, Lewis Carroll, South Mall, Paul Woodruff,
Merrell: Baum: Kinsolving, the Drag, Plan II office, South Mall,
Phil: Carroll
Thida: Carroll
Will: Carroll
Senior Seminar
Oxford
Samuel Johnson: Kristin: Pembroke, University College
John Ruskin and Nicholas Clayton: Emily: Christ Church, St. Mary's Austin
C. S. Lewis: Amy: Magdalen, the Kilns, Jester dorm at U.T.
J. R. R. Tolkien: Megan: Merton
T. E. Lawrence: Andrew: All Souls
U. T. parodies:
Freshman Seminar
Oxford
Ben: Blackstone: Pembroke College
Aaron: Hawking
Texas
Bertha: George/Cowan: Stadium
Jessica: Whitman: HRC
Jessica: Dobie: Dobie Mall
Jose: Moore: RLM
Katie: Jordan: statue
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* "Thor's Hammer is a symbol of the struggle
against chaos and evil. It's the weapon used by Thor against giants, monsters,
and other trollish folk who threaten the common good. It seems particularly
appropriate in these troubled times"(http://www.ragweedforge.com/ThorsHammer.html).
See especially http://www.mackaos.com.au/Articles/Mjol.htmlReturn
to Course Page
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to Bump Home Page