Commentaries
In my classes, I frequently ask you to write commentaries on your online and visual projects. These commentaries provide an opportunity for you to explain how your work fulfill the terms of the assignment, and what you intended the work to say.
Secondly, the commentary provides a space for you to conceptualize and contextualize your work--to see in it the application of critical ideas about writing, culture, design, and history.
Excellent Commentaries Do the Following:
- thoughtfully analyze the project in at least 500 words (about 2 double-spaced pages), speaking to the assignment's criteria and intentions. This commentary should be printed out, stapled, and turned in at the required time.
- present their analyses in formal, well-written, grammatically correct academic prose.
- use critical terms from the assignment, from class readings, and from class discussions. These critical terms should be employed thoughtfully and correctly, and be highlighed in bold.
- selectively include quotations from relevant course readings
- compare the project to examples of from class in order to illustrate purposes and methods. It is also useful to contrast the projects to some of these examples.
- cite and document all outside refereces (including online ones) using MLA citation and documentation format.
- fulfill any other specific requirements for the commentary specified in the assignment itself. Sometimes your assignments will require a certain number of quotations from certain class readings, for example.
