Keywords: A Portfolio Project for Exploring Alternative Genres and Discourses in American Studies Classrooms

• In Event: Unconventional Projects for an Unconventional Era: Creative and Multimedia Work in and beyond the Classroom

Abstract

As practitioners of American Studies, we value and commit ourselves to interdisciplinary methodologies. However, in the classroom, many of us are apt to rely on traditional academic forms for the generation of student work and the measurement of learning outcomes. In this paper, I address the benefits of allowing students to explore alternative genres and knowledge discourses in the context of a semester-long portfolio project assigned to introductory American Studies students at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, as well as Glenn Hendler and Bruce Burgett, students are asked to select and research a “keyword” of their choosing over the course of a semester. Students are encouraged to choose terms that are narrower and more concrete than those analyzed by Williams and in the Burgett & Hendler anthology; examples of successful projects include the keywords of “jazz,” “mom,” “Hollywood,” and “cowboy.” After an introduction to effective research methods and library databases, students conduct primary and secondary source research, culminating in a “keyword essay,” in which they explore genealogies and usages of their term, as well as a work of cultural analysis, in which they closely read and interpret a text relating to their keyword. Finally, students submit a “hands-on component,” for which they are asked to generate work in virtually any format other than that of the traditional academic essay and to analyze their own work in the context of their keyword and of the interdiscipline of American Studies. Recent submissions have included pieces of fine art, video games, oral histories, and accounts of participation in community actions.

The keyword portfolio project – and, particularly, the hands-on component – allows students, the majority of whom are not American Studies majors, to bring discourses of knowledge from their “home” disciplines into the AMS classroom and to consider how those discourses may inform, as well as be informed by, interdisciplinary ways of knowing and learning. In this presentation, I focus particularly on the construction of effective assignment sheets and assessment materials in order to facilitate the inclusion of non-traditional work in the American Studies classroom.

Many of the undergraduate students I encounter feel strongly that they are living and studying in an environment fraught with crisis. Many question whether the educations they are receiving speak meaningfully to contemporary socio-cultural, economic, and political conflicts and divisions. The keyword project enables these students to juxtapose traditional academic research and writing with hands-on work. Consequently, they emerge from the American Studies classroom not only equipped with improved reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, but also with a stronger sense of how one might actively and meaningfully intervene in real-world dialogues that are relevant to both their academic and non-academic interests and passions.

Author

• Larissa Werhnyak, The University of Texas at Dallas