One member of each group should summarize that project-with a detailed time line going forward and a list of responsibilities attached to the name of each group member. We will need to approve these on next Tuesday.
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Project: Chernyshevsky WHAT IS TO BE DONE
Group members: Anna, Margaret, Vanda
We will create an e-book with the missing part of Vera Pavlovna’s 4th dream, in both Russian and English.
1 PART – RESEARCH
-Aesthetics of Chernyshevsky;
-Views on revolution (violent/peaceful/cyclical/rapid???);
-Careful study of previous dreams of Vera to simulate Chernyshevsky’s (for the Russian version) and Michael Katz’s translation’s (for English one) writing style;
-Biographical notes, articles, autobiographical comments, etc.;
-Lenin ‘What Is To Be Done?’ to learn about the possible course of the revolution, as interpreted by Lenin;
-Marx – Dialectical Materialism. Study the philosophical/ideological ideas of the time to get inside the head of the writer and learn what inspired him;
-Careful analysis of Rakhmetov’s character (ideal revolutionary);
-Make comments/notes on any peculiarities of stylistic features (pay attention to the proportion of description of the setting versus action itself, lexicon, allusions (if any), etc…)
PART 2: Writing the text
PART 3: Translating into Russian
PART 3: Creating an e-book
Distribution of the tasks: Anna in charge of technology, design, and other software related issues;
Vanda – research and most of the study of the background info, translation;
Margarita – putting together the prose, creative work, research on the topic of Lenin and his emulation of the “ideal revolutionary” described by Chernyshevsky
Timeline:
March 8: meeting to discuss the rest of the timeline:)
Flora – Nadezhda Durova
Bry- Karolina Pavlova
Katherine –Princess Dashkova
Kelsey –Nadezhda Teplova
Each member of our group will research one 19th-century female writer (see list above). Having acquired sufficient knowledge about our writers (we have given ourselves until March 14th to do research) we will begin to tweet to each other, taking the voices of our respective writers, debating and exploring issues common to these women. Each week we will sit down and have a twitter conversation exploring a specific issue that we have decided on in advance.
Some issues we hope to cover in the five weeks we have in which to tweet:
Society’s treatment of women, the effect of their gender on their work
Influence of other writers, influence of history
Public response to their writing
Choice of topic, inspiration, writing process
Family, background information
We will also start a blog in order to have a place to link to and comment on longer texts.
Group Oblomov: Ben Kingston, Juan Machado, Melody Wang
Our objective is to create a tumblr blog that will serve as a multimedia appendix to the text of Oblomov. On it, we will trace the places and works of literature and music that alluded to in the text, including relevant audiovisual files and links. Another page will include snippets of the film adaptation, which will import from a DVD copy we requested on interlibrary loan. Other pages include “about the author,” “memorable quotes,” and “influence.” The tumblr format is most useful because it allow direct storing of content.
Furthermore, Juan and Melody will translate the content we create into Portuguese and Chinese respectively and create tumblr blogs in those languages. Once the blogs are live, we will link them as “External Links” on Wikipedia under their respective languages.
Timeline:
Tuesday, March 8 – Meet to discuss the book
Friday, March 11 – Discuss progress and screening of Oblomov
Friday, March 18 – Compile content
Saturday, March 26 – Finish translations into Portuguese and Chinese and make blogs public
March 26 to April 19 – publicize tumblr’s on Wikipedia and blogs dedicated to literature.
Duties:
All members: tracing allusions and finding relevant AV files/links, publicizing the blog
Ben: “Influence,” “Memorable quotes,”
Juan: Format blogs, “About the author,” and translation into Portuguese
Melody: Select and import snippets from the movie, and translation into Chinese
Group: Isabel Howard, Emily de Konig, Brandt Silver-Korn, and Russell Jacobs.
Overview: We will be constructing a website on IWeb and using videos, photo albums, and text to bring to life various chosen Chekhov stories. The bringing together of the technology will be overseen by Emily. The videos will show interviews with different Middlebury professors who will discuss their favorite aspects of the chosen stories (Brandt). The text will provide short description and analysis of the stories (Russell), and the photo albums will use Russian paintings from the era to illustrate the characters and settings relating to the stories (Isabel). The website will be visually appealing, engaging, and fun to navigate — and of course, educational. The website will be an interactive view into the world of Chekhov, of turn-of-the-century Russia, and of the impact that these stories have had on people today.
Timeline:
Saturday, March 5 – meet to discuss 1st readings
Decide whether to pursue other readings or to base project off of those just read
Wednesday, March 9 – meet again to discuss remaining readings if necessary. Finalize list of multimedia components.
Saturday, March 12 – meeting to check up on and share research
Wednesday, March 16 – meeting to share initial outlines/research plans. Decide on timeline for the remaining time — Wednesday/Saturday meetings will continue until the project is turned in.
Chekhov’s Plays
Rouan Yao, Alexandra Siega, Sarah Bellingham
Overview: We are planning to construct a website on Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. We have made the decision to narrow our study down to one play in order to do an in-depth, quality analysis of one of Chekhov’s most renowned works. This website will be made up of several components: a plot summary, a character map, a page of major themes, a historical context page, an author biography, a page dedicated to the history of the play (including information on it’s reception and translations), a page on adaptations of the play (including interviews with the director and/or actors of an ongoing Uncle Vanya adaptation on our own campus), and a game page (with educational games inspired by and pertaining to Uncle Vanya).
Distribution of labor: Rouen will be covering the games and character map, which will be both an intellectual and technological challenge. Alexandra will be covering the adaptation page, conducting interviews and research. She will be working to provide not only text for her page, but also video clips. Sarah is covering the history of the play, the historical context, and the author biography, doing research and writing. The group will create the plot summary and major themes pages together, and finding the appropriate website program has been designated a group responsibility.
Timeline: We will be meeting weekly on Thursdays beginning on March 10 and continuing on through April 7. During these meetings, we will discuss our progress with the group (each individual has a slightly different personal timeline due to the differences in task assignments). We will also use our meeting time to discuss combined-effort work. On March 10, we will be presenting our independent plot outline proposals and collaborating to write the plot outline for the website. On March 17, we will brainstorm and discuss the themes of the play, designating a number of themes to each member to write about. On March 24, we will combine the themes and theme discussions to create the final draft of the text for our theme page. By March 31, we will have begun the process of putting together our website with the texts we have written, the outlines we have made, the timelines we have drawn up, the video clips we have taken, and the pictures we have chosen. We have proposed an end date of April 8 in order to have emergency back-up time to deal with any unexpected technical difficulties.