“Reading” a Campus Memorial

This first assignment is a kind of warm-up for later discussions—and you have only until Friday morning to do it. So you need to move quickly, beginning this afternoon immediately after our campus tour.

1. Choose a memorial on campus, defining memorial loosely to include any of the artifacts, buildings, place names, etc. that are intended, partially or in whole, to remember a person/s or event.

2. Visit the memorial when you have at least half an hour to observe, and take careful notes. What do your eyes take in first about the memorial? Where do your eyes move next, and what draws your attention. Why does it draw your attention?? What seems most straightforward about the memorial’s message? What is obscure, puzzling, confusing?

3. Once you’ve done an initial observation of the memorial itself, study its surroundings. What direction does it face? What does it look out toward? What is in its background? What is the immediate surrounding area like?

4. Then consider how the memorial speaks to its surrounds and is in turn shaped by them. What effect do the surrounding grounds, other objects, etc. have on the memorial and its message? Why do you think the memorial has this particular location and these particular surroundings?

5. You may want to take a photo of the memorial or to find a representation of it on the Web—especially since our course focuses on the effects of media n representation and memory.

6. Take your notes, photos, etc. with you as you do a little digging into the history of the memorial. Check out books on Stanford in the bookstore and sources in Green Library. Find out as much as you can about the memorial.

7. Start pulling your notes and images together for a ten-minute presentation in class on Friday. Be sure to practice and time the presentation—at least twice.

8. Then on Friday--stand and deliver!