Museum of Civilization Essay

Group Presentation: in class on Friday 5 Dec. or Monday 8 Dec.
Individual Essay: due Monday 8 Dec. at class time

In Station Eleven, Clark’s “Museum of Civilization” is an attempt to preserve and understand the past by collecting dead technologies. At different points in the novel, each of the characters wrestles with ways of preserving what came before while finding a new path forward. Over the course of the semester we’ve explored a long history of information overload and multiple intersecting traditions of people trying to come to terms with their tools, their past, and their future.

This assignment will be in two stages: a group presentation and an individual essay.

Group Presentation (40pts)

You’ll be split into groups of three, and each group will be assigned a character from the novel at random. Your presentation will summarize this character’s role in the novel and connect them to the themes of our course. How has this character grappled with information overload? How have they dealt with catastrophic change in the world around them?

Your presentation should include specific examples from the novel as well as clear connections to one or more of our other readings from the semester.

Individual Essay (60pts)

In the individual essay, you’ll continue to work with a character from Station Eleven. You may write about the same character from your group presentation or choose a new one.

Find an article about a contemporary or historical anxiety around information overload. This will be easiest if it refers to a specific information technology, like the smartphone, the printing press, chatbots, novels, or television. Your essay should connect that technological anxiety to your chosen character. In what way do you see this character as reflecting the real-world feeling you’ve chosen to write about? What might the character’s actions in the novel teach us about responding to information overload?

Your essay should be 1500-2000 words (put the wordcount in your header), use MLA citations and format, and be uploaded to Sakai as a PDF file.

Requirements

• Submit your essay to the assignment on Sakai
• 1500-200 words
• Include the wordcount in the header of your paper
• Double-spaced, readable font
• Use MLA Style for citations, headers, and page numbers
• PDF format (not a Word doc or other file type)