Event Title
Cognitive Migration
Location
Student Center Ballroom, Cleveland State University
Event Type
Poster
Start Date
15-4-2016 2:30 PM
End Date
15-4-2016 4:00 PM
Description
The project based lesson that will be presented is entitled Cognitive Migration. This project will focus on mental "displacement" as a form of migration rather than actual physical displacement. Because I teach literature and writing, I wanted to create a project for my students that would force them to read literature through critical literary lenses and apply that analysis to their own moments of transcendence or epiphany. The anchor pieces of literature for this project come from the American Gothic genre since so much of this literature deals with difficult-to-express issues and anxieties, feelings of isolation and alienation, and the testing of established boundaries or limits. The main goal of the project is to get students thinking about their own migratory experiences of the mind: specifically recounting a time when they looked at the world and themselves one way, had their perceptions tested, and then saw the world and themselves differently. I am referring to these established perceptions as "pre-migratory" cognitive experiences, and changes in attitudes about one's self and one's community as "post-migratory" cognitive experiences. The turning point in the experience focuses on that transitional moment when perceptions are questioned and subsequently altered.
The initial part of the project will ask students to use their analytical skills to read a chosen piece of literature and apply a critical lens (or multiples lenses) to its interpretation. One idea could be to read "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from a Feminist approach. Another could be to analyze "The Tell-Tale Heart," by Edgar Allan Poe through a psycoanalytic approach. The second part of the project asks students to make an art to text connection by choosing a piece of existing art that exemplifies the major theme(s) of the selected piece of literature. A comparison will be made between the two, focusing on details of both pieces at a more critical rather than literal level. The final phase of the project requires students to use those same analytical and evaluative skills to create a piece of art of their own as well as an accompanying narrative. The student's original art piece should show both pre-migratory and post-migratory experiences in a creative, original format (use of various mediums) with focus on abstract imagery. The narrative should explain the art piece and tell the story of the student's cognitive migration.
Cognitive Migration
Student Center Ballroom, Cleveland State University
The project based lesson that will be presented is entitled Cognitive Migration. This project will focus on mental "displacement" as a form of migration rather than actual physical displacement. Because I teach literature and writing, I wanted to create a project for my students that would force them to read literature through critical literary lenses and apply that analysis to their own moments of transcendence or epiphany. The anchor pieces of literature for this project come from the American Gothic genre since so much of this literature deals with difficult-to-express issues and anxieties, feelings of isolation and alienation, and the testing of established boundaries or limits. The main goal of the project is to get students thinking about their own migratory experiences of the mind: specifically recounting a time when they looked at the world and themselves one way, had their perceptions tested, and then saw the world and themselves differently. I am referring to these established perceptions as "pre-migratory" cognitive experiences, and changes in attitudes about one's self and one's community as "post-migratory" cognitive experiences. The turning point in the experience focuses on that transitional moment when perceptions are questioned and subsequently altered.
The initial part of the project will ask students to use their analytical skills to read a chosen piece of literature and apply a critical lens (or multiples lenses) to its interpretation. One idea could be to read "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from a Feminist approach. Another could be to analyze "The Tell-Tale Heart," by Edgar Allan Poe through a psycoanalytic approach. The second part of the project asks students to make an art to text connection by choosing a piece of existing art that exemplifies the major theme(s) of the selected piece of literature. A comparison will be made between the two, focusing on details of both pieces at a more critical rather than literal level. The final phase of the project requires students to use those same analytical and evaluative skills to create a piece of art of their own as well as an accompanying narrative. The student's original art piece should show both pre-migratory and post-migratory experiences in a creative, original format (use of various mediums) with focus on abstract imagery. The narrative should explain the art piece and tell the story of the student's cognitive migration.
