STORIES & EXPLORATION PROJECT
The final stage comprises the culmination of the entire project. It is a report, in formal writing
format, asking students to revisit the initial interests/concerns that they raised at the beginning of
the year, demonstrate how their narrative and the research that they have done since Stage 2 have
enabled them to explore these interests, and offer conclusions about that research and about any
new understandings they have gained about those initial interests/concerns and about the role and
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potential power of stories/storytelling in informing and transforming womens ritual. Consider it
a report about the journey that you have taken in an attempt to address those initial
interests/concerns in the context of stories/storytelling and womens ritual. This is not a
research essay it is a Report about the work that you have been doing, in formal writing
format (@9-11 pgs). Be sure to ground your analysis in course themes/theories/materials.
Your original Stage 2 assignment, with my comments on it, must be attached. One-half letter
grade will be subtracted from the grade earned on this stage of the assignment if the student fails
to attach their original Stage 2.
The report should begin with a brief outline of the interests/concerns that you articulated in the
first weeks of the course. Do not simply repeat Stage 1. That was the starting-point of your
research and you have now chosen to follow one of the initial paths and are now at the end of
your journey. What is your thesis now? Include a critical analysis of those interests/concerns as
you see them now, from these last weeks of the course. How do they relate to larger questions
about stories and womens ritual? What might you change or add to them, given what you have
learned through the year? Do they still persist as interests for you or have you addressed them in
such a way that they are set to rest? What has moved you to choose the path that you have
followed? The report should include a detailed discussion of the methodologies that you have
developed for your research/explorations and where/how this has been derived from the
themes/theories/materials of the course. It should include a discussion of those issues that
became particularly resonant with you and your own life as you immersed yourself in the
research. Do not simply summarize Stage 2. You are expected to have moved your research &
analysis beyond that which you did in that stage. Include a critical analysis of this process and
experience as you see them now, as well as how your Storytelling Narrative itself informed the
remainder of your research. Did telling the story and the feedback from your colleagues and
myself enable you to understand your research from new perspectives? Were you moved by the
process to answer some of those initial concerns? To ask new/different questions? To push
your research to a deeper level? Where, subsequent to your Storytelling Narrative, did your
research take you? The report should conclude with some of the ways in which your explorations
in this project ultimately add to notions about the role and potential power of stories/storytelling
in informing and transforming womens ritual. How/has your project moved our knowledge in
the course to greater depths and/or in different directions?
While I expect there to be differences between stages, substantial differences in topic/focus
between Stage 1 and Stage 3 of this assignment will not be accepted unless a change has been
confirmed by me, via email, no later than Week 23. Reports with completely different themes
and/or different texts submitted without confirmation of obtaining permission for such changes
will not be accepted and the grade for the report will be an F. Late submissions will be subject to
a penalty of one-half letter grade per day. As this is due in the last day of the course, some late
assignments may not be accepted at all.
