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21A.501J | Fall 2024 | Undergraduate

# Art, Craft, Science

Assignment 1: Instructions (500 words, due session 6)

Without consulting any outside sources, write up clear and complete instructions for something you know how to make that you consider to involve craft practice and which doesn’t require super-specialized equipment (e.g., rudiments of knitting, a recipe for cooking or baking, origami folding, etc.). In addition to the document you upload to the class website, bring a hard copy to class to exchange with a classmate.

Student Examples

“Crisply Crafted Creations: Paper Airplanes” (PDF)

“Intro to Blender!” (PDF)

Assignment 2: Archaeological documentation (due session 9)

Use archaeological strategies and measures of your choosing to illustrate an artifact, structure, or material aspect of your choosing in a manner that conveys the most detail about the subject. The drawing can be large, small, contained in your notebook, or outside your notebook. Remember, try to relate the most information you possibly can through the drawing.

Assignment 3: Write-up on the MIT Museum visit (800 words, due session 11)

Your account of the MIT Museum visit and write-up of the art, science, and craft underpinning a display there. What was your impression of the Optiker exhibition? In the display you selected (could be Optiker or any other display at the museum), what drew you to it? What did the display or displays communicate to you specifically? Did the selected display provoke you to think about topics you otherwise would not have considered—if so, in what ways? What is your impression of the overall message conveyed by the MIT Museum’s exhibitions and accompanying narratives?

Assignment 4 (800 words, due session 12)

This 800-word assignment is a reflection on your visit to the Harvard Museum of Natural History and/or Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. For it, I’ll expect you to write up a narrative account of your visit and a reflection on some of its exhibitions in relation to our readings, specifically Haraway (“Teddy Bear Patriarchy”) and Rieppel (“Bringing Dinosaurs Back to Life”).

Think on the issues raised in those two articles—what museological content reveals about its makers, the craft of exhibition, the potential hidden labors, the objectivity/subjectivity of the science, the underlying narratives embedded in the layout, content, etc.

Looking forward to hear about the visits!

Student Examples

“Harvard Museum of Natural History Visit” (PDF)

“Harvard Museum Reflections” (PDF)

Assignment 5: Show and tell and write-up of your “Following Instructions” experience (800 words, due session 19)

Implement the instructions you received during session 6. Using class readings from the past four sessions to guide your discussion, write an essay on your experience. What concepts can you employ to illuminate your experience? At the same time, how does your experience illuminate or sharpen for you some of the theoretical concepts we have been discussing? Explain your responses to both questions. In addition, draw on Sennett’s “Expressive Instructions” to characterize the “expressiveness” of the instructions you were given. Do you have any thoughts about the instructions you wrote at the start of the semester? Bring both your essay and material results to class for a show and tell. Your bibliography must include at least four readings.

Assignment 6: Your cheesemaking experience (800 words, due session 24)

Your account of your mozzarella-making experience. Beforehand, view “Thirty Minute Mozzarella with The Cheese Queen.”

Have fun!

Assignment 7: Art, Craft, Science today! (Due session 25)

For this assignment you have two options to choose from:

1. Use the internet (YouTube, TikTok, blogs, Instagram, etc.) to pursue an art, craft, or science-inspired activity that produces a tangible result; that result can be an actual artistic work or craft object that you bring in, or it can also be an audio or audiovisual recording (if related to an instrument, a science experiment, or a performance). This activity/medium should be NEW to you, should not be taken from other classes and should be relatively involved, with time commitment akin to a 2000-word essay (4–6-hour minimum investment of time). The expectation is that you share the result (for better or worse) during our last day of class.

OR alternatively, you can

2. Write a final reflection essay on the class “Art, Craft, Science.” The topic you choose is open, but your essay should closely engage with concepts and data from four course readings and draw from at least two concepts discussed in class and recorded in your notebook.

Student Example

“Beetle Woodcarving” (PDF)

Note: Student examples appear courtesy of MIT students and are anonymous by request.

## Course Info

### Instructor

- Dr. Franco Rossi

### Departments

- Anthropology
- Science, Technology, and Society

### As Taught In

Fall 2024

### Level

Undergraduate

### Topics

- Fine Arts
  - Visual Arts
- Social Science
  - Anthropology
    - Cultural Anthropology

### Learning Resource Types

assignment_turned_in Activity Assignments with Examples
auto_stories Readings
Student Work
assignment_turned_in Written Assignments with Examples

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