1. Learning by doing
Create a tap essay about a space in which you have lived experience. The space can include your current neighborhood, your childhood city, or a digital space where you spend time. Your essay should tell a story and has a message that is supported by evidence.
As you create your story, reflect on:
- The story’s point of view: Are you telling the story in first-person, second-person, or third-person? Why?
- Sentence types/moods: What is each of sentence moods you are using (declarative, exclamatory, imperative, interrogative) achieve?
- The genre’s affordances: Are you using any of the following features to communicate your message in non-textual (para- or extra-linguistic) ways? How does using these features contribute to/shape the message of the essays?
- Font size
- Font color
- Background color
- Arrangement of words on the slide
- Slide sequences, including creation of zooming in/out effect
- Cropping the picture to focus the attention on the matter at hand
- Using arrows to point at things
- Repetition of words/phrases
- Non-textual/non-visual data: e.g., audio
- Anything else?
- ‘Classic’ essay features: Are you using features of ‘classic’ essay in your tap essay?
- Footnotes
- In-text citation
- Headings
- ANything else?
- Your experience: Finally, how would you describe your experience making and/or viewing a tap essay? What is the genre good for? What can it do effectively? What kind of things you couldn’t do with this format?
2. The (fuzzy) genre borders?
Select an ethnographic fiction or an (ethno)graphic novel from the provided list of resources (or somewhere else). Read and evaluate the chosen work, considering its similarities to a ‘classic’ ethnography or a non-ethnographic fiction/novel. Identify the ways in which it differs from these genres. Can you readily distinguish the influences of both genres within the text you read? How does this guide your understanding of these ‘in-between’ genres?