writ 1622: human rights / humans write

In class weve discussed how our definitions of the human, of human rights and responsibilities, and our conception of a just human society is intimately connected to the material dimensions of literacy: to the kinds of texts we read and write, to the political, social, and economic contexts in which we read and write them, even to the physical elements of textual design. In this project, youll develop youll explore the relationship between literacy and humanity by (1) composing a text about that relationship and then (2) analyzing, in a separate piece of writing, the decisions that informed your composition. The text you compose can come about in many ways. You might develop an interpretation of the text you brought in to class last week. You might interpret a specific passage from Reading Lolita or of a scene from Helvetica. You might tell the story of a significant literacy event from your own life or write a fictional narrative that serves as an allegory of one of the ideas discussed by Hunt. The choice is yours, provided that the text you create be in dialogue with Lynn Hunts Inventing Human Rights. The material form your text takes is likewise up to you. You might compose an essay or a work of fiction. You might compose a text that incorporates verbal and visual elements. You might create a text that communicates chiefly through its design. However, your analysis of your text should be, so to speak, straightforward: i.e., an essay of roughly 1,0001,250 words. In that essay, you will explain how the material dimensions of your text contributes to its meaning. For example, youll likely discuss how your choice of genre serves to communicate your idea effectively; you might also talk about decisions you made with respect to plotting, paragraph structure, or sentence structure; you might also talk about decisions you made with respect to visual design. In short, think of your analysis as an opportunity to explain to your readers how all of the different elements of your composition work together to embody your idea. Your first draft is due by the start of class on Tuesday, April 10. A revised draft is due on Thursday, April 12. Your final revisions are due by noon on June 7. Please be sure to format and share your document correctly. Please be sure that your drafts are in a form that can be revised. For example, if youre planning to create a 10-foot marble sculpture of a Helvetica capital A, dont carve the sculpture and bring that to class; instead, draw a sketch first, so that you can get feedback from your peers and me before doing anything difficult to revise. In class on Tuesday the 10th, youll give and receive suggestions for revision with a small group of your peers. The sheet youll fill out for each of your peers is here: http://scr.bi/H9JfYD

project 1: material literacy

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