Developed by Anca Birzescu and Radhika Gajjala for Spring 2014 Graduate and Undergraduate classes taught by Radhika Gajjala at BGSU.

Learning Objectives

• Experiment with hands-on, applied skills outside of traditional academic writing
• Make feminist theoretical terms, ideas, and arguments approachable, accessible, and/or available in other formats, vernaculars, and to new audiences
• Connect theories and practices of feminism along key themes
• Materially and then also virtually present your ideas, interpretations, critiques to others involved in the DOCC2013
• Understand “value” outside present day post-industrial capitalistic frameworks
• Create community through gift giving

Project Stages Summary

A.Create (alone or in group)

B.Display

C.Exchange/Barter

A. For this final project, you are going to embark on an exciting creative practice/theory-oriented process in which you are going to produce a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) object or craft that materializes your response to, critique or understanding of a feminist interpretation of one of 10 course themes, to be made alone or in groups after discussion and approval of instructor. Only your creativity and inspiration are the limit for the artifact you create. In the past, students’ artifact choices ran the gamut from carpentry, knitting, and lego to photo collages, film strips objects and wired sculptures.

B. Take this artifact production process as a challenge to represent the material outside of the digital and outside of words. However, once you build your object, you will have to present/display it digitally as well. More specifically, you will create a digital expression–of your own choice– of the built object, where you will articulate your critical perspective on the link between the object and the chosen concept/ course theme. For instance, you can upload/post photos or a video recording of the artifact on different online venues such as a website, facebook, vimeo, blogs and so forth post.

C. After you present/display the material objects online, you will next proceeded to a “gift exchange” activity where you will think critically about VALUE. Therefore, while you are producers of such DIY objects, you are also going to become consumers as you are going to assess/describe items created by other colleagues and thenexchange/barter items. You will thus swap your object with another class participant in relation to their description of your own item’s value. This final stage of your project is actually a bidding process where you are going to give your artifact away and where you will write each other explaining why the built objects had value. The students who made the highest bid will acquire the respective artifacts.

Previous Student Work

See items made by Pitzer/BGSU in the Beta DOCC 2012-2013 here.

See items made at Pitzer for the DOCC 2013-2014 here.