Field Preparations | Introduction

Field Preparations is an intensive workshop comprising one full day of training with seminars and exercises, a two-part multimodal portfolio assignment, and a second full day as a Crit session to provide feedback on the students’ multi­modal portfolio.

The seminars of day one address two interrelated issues. First, we pull back from the individual lessons and modalities to look at the bigger picture as students endeavor to finalize their research proposals and become secure in their chosen methodologies. Second, we endeavor to make linkages between previous lessons and assignments to enable students to fill any gaps in their skills and knowledge. The lessons and discussion around these topics are complemented by two exercises aimed to help students, on the one hand, conceptualize linkages necessary for building larger narrative, rhetorical, and analytical structures and, on the other hand, cultivating a practice based on formal, aesthetic, and methodological intentionality.

These two exercises provide the foundation for a two-part Multimodal Portfolio Assignment (MPA) that serves as a multimodal companion to the methodology outlined in the research proposal. During the final Crit session, students will receive feedback on their efforts to test these methodologies.

During this period, students also attend a one-on-one meeting with their supervisor to get input on finalizing their proposals.