The Unessay

The image shows a color photo of a flesh coloured prosthetic mask of the left side of the face, with a mustache and eyeglasses. The entire object is located inside a plastic case, and has some text describing the history of the mask inside it as we…

What is the Unessay?

My experiments with the unessay- created by historian Christopher Jones- began with simple but troubling questions about how to effectively teach history: how do we communicate historical narratives? Do we do so solely in the form of text/writing? Who and what kind of people/narratives are we excluding when we insist solely on written assignments? As I began working in disability studies and disability history, I was increasingly interested in experimenting with disability as critical, accessible pedagogy in the classroom as well, and my experimentations with unessay were the result. It all began when I saw academic colleagues on Twitter discussing their unessays, and I must say I was not convinced the first time around (not being very confident with experiments in my pedagogy); but I admit to being intrigued.

I started to experiment with the format on a small scale in group work. My earliest efforts were tentative, and that tentativeness was naturally reflected in my students’ engagement, too. At that time, I was also very much the neophyte with new technologies in the classroom, like 3D or laser printing, although I wanted very much to use them. In their group work in my classes, students began to blog, make digital stories, visit the 3D printing/laser printing laboratory on campus (with initially mixed results). It has taken time, but I am a strong advocate of offering students the opportunity to choose the unessay as part of their assessment. Not only does it allow students to choose formats that engage their creativity and individual skills, but is also rigorous and substantive in terms of historical analysis and research density.

Building a Research Project: (Whether Essay or Unessay)

Step I: The Topic

Identifying a topic of interest. This is often the easiest to do. It is easier to settle on this than it is to do anything else.

Step II: The Time and the Place

Specify a time frame and spatial restriction for this topic. If you are interested in the Black Death, it covered 3 centuries. If you choose too broad a frame of analysis in terms of time or space, you will end up writing a very shallow, not particularly detailed text and I will not be grading those kinds of papers/projects well.

Step III: The Secondary Sources

Build a bibliography of secondary sources first. Find a minimum of 10 sources (peer-reviewed, academic journal articles, books and book chapters). Here are the websites you can use to find directions:

Project MuseLinks to an external site.

PubMedLinks to an external site.

Jstor: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/Links to an external site. 

Or just go to the search function of the OU library to find your materials.

Tips: Always read the footnotes of the authors you are reading to identify more secondary source material if you are having any trouble finding these sources.

For guides on how to read these: Reading Skills, Part I: How to Read a Secondary Source

Step IV: The Primary Sources

Build a bibliography of primary sources. Find a minimum of 10 primary sources. You can use the newspaper databases we have used in class:

Proquest Historical Newspapers (access to the historical archives of the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the WSJ, the LA Times, etc)Links to an external site.

Readex Historical Newspapers (in addition to North American newspapers, the database has access to African, South Asian, South American newspapers) Links to an external site.

Gale Primary Sources: http://gdc.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/gdc/artemis?p=GDCS&u=norm94900Links to an external site. 

Other sources for government/state information include:

Step V: The Prep

Begin your research; and read the accumulated materials. As you read, please take notes. Do not forget this part of the research guidelines, since students often read without taking notes, and it can get to the end of the project and you might forget points, information that you might see or notice as you read.

Step VI: The Questions

Remember that the key to doing good research is not just to describe events and dates, but also to ask important and interesting questions and to use the materials that you find to attempt to answer them. These questions need to be well-thought out. If you do not think them out, you will write a paper that is simply factual and/or descriptive, and not analytical. It will not be graded as well as papers that are centered around interesting questions and make the attempt to answer those questions. Remember that when you begin to build your projects.

Step VII: The Format

Now that you have marshalled all your sources and thought about them, you might need to think about what kind of format works the best way to tell the narratives you want to tell. Would a digital story work for you? Would you be more interested in creating a comic book? Would you be interested in writing a traditional essay? Are you interested in creating a photo essay online? This choice is yours. I leave it to you to decide based on the experiments with methods we have done in the class during group sessions so far.

 In an unessay you have complete freedom of form: you can use whatever style of writing, presentation, even media you want.  Here is your opportunity to break free from the boundaries of the traditional essay. Be creative. Find alternative ways to examine and answer the topic. Consider what are your strengths, talents and skills. Think meaningfully and carefully about how to implement those strengths. 

Rubric for Unessays!

(This rubric is heavily borrowed/adapted from Emily Clark)

An A unessay: This unessay constitutes a critical and active engagement with the course material that shows insight and creativity and demonstrates time and effort devoted to creating something thoughtful. The chosen medium works persuasively with the design and polish of the unessay. The project’s structural and formal elements productively serve the core concept of the unessay. The unessay includes a clear and insightful connection between your choice of topic, the course material and reflects a convincing and nuanced thesis. An A unessay come with a clearly stated explanation. This will include your thesis and an explanation of how your unessay responds to the prompt, as well as a bibliography with both primary and secondary sources, primary sources using the methods we practiced in class, and peer-reviewed legitimate secondary sources. An A unessay was also planned in stages, and thus received feedback at all stages.

A B unessay: This unessay meaningfully engages course material and shows an effort to creatively evaluate the information with some degree of clarity. It reflects some time, effort, and forethought. The chosen medium works with the unessay presentation, but some additional design forethought would have helped. The unessay’s structural and formal elements serve the core concept of the project. Accompanied statement provides some clarity to the piece but not complete explanation. A B unessay does have a bibliography, but can be missing either primary or secondary sources, or uses sources that are simply the result of a Google search, rather than one involving library/database searches.

A C unessay: This unessay shows some engagement with the course material but it is unsustained uncreative, and inconsequential. It fails to developed a critical and reflective perspective. The chosen medium doesn’t work with the unessay’s presentation. The unessay identifies a vague connection between the choice of the topic, the themes of the course and thus fails to offer a clear thesis statement. Both it and the explanation will appear to be thrown together at the last minute. The C unessay has only a few or no sources in the bibliography.

A D or F unessay: This unessay lacks any serious effort to accomplish the assigned task. The unessay idea and execution are ill-defined, lack focus and clarity, and contains no main argument. Any unessay not discussed with me before the deadline will automatically receive no higher than an D. Check your assignment guidelines for that deadline.