This assignment is based on one created by Dr. Tony Fassi’s for a 12th grade high school English class. It can obviously be adapted for other works of literature, including poems, and we’ve seen version of this assignment used in the science classroom with students “curating” and then presenting on scholarly papers.

Find the Project Gutenberg edition of Moby-Dick. Follow the link corresponding to the chapter you’ve chosen to curate. Annotate the chapter using the hypothes.is web annotation app.

Make this chapter your own. Your goal should be to turn this digital representation of one of the book’s chapters into a multimedia exhibit. Continue to reread, reconsider, and annotate your chapter as we make our way through the rest of the novel book. There’s no reason you shouldn’t read the chapter right now, even if we won’t get to it for weeks. And you should reread and reconsider its richest passages in light of what comes not only before but also after.

In choosing which chapter to curate you might consider what themes most interest you? What are some of your favorite passages in the novel? What historical themes are you interested in exploring? I may be able to help point you in the right direction once you’ve gotten through done some initial brainstorming. Note that I have posted some of the discussion questions you and your classmates have written as document-level annotations on some chapters of Moby-Dick. You might consider some of these questions when you begin thinking more deeply about the chapter you’ve decided curate.

Attempt to think about passages both intratextually (by making connections between chapter of the novel) and intertextually (by making connections to other works of literature, music, poetry, or art). Add images to your annotations and include links to other texts. Try and use the hypothes.is tool to its full capacity!

After you have annotated your chapter using hypothes.is, you will present text-art exhibit to the class. You will project your chapter on a large screen at the front of one of the computer labs. In a five-minute presentation you will demonstrate and justify the curatorial choices you’ve made in creatively exploring, explaining, and enlivening one of Melville’s chapters. We will make a high-quality 48k/16bit audio recording of your presentation that we you will upload Soundcloud and embed into an annotation on the Project Gutenberg page of the chapter you annotate! Future students will be able to move through your annotations while listening to you share your thoughts about a particular chapter of Moby-Dick.