-Ph.D. in Cultural and Critical Studies-
JESSICA FITZPATRICK
SAMPLE of TEACHING HIGHLIGHTS
More Recently...
my students in the week-long Provost Academy course remixed the city. I ensured this learning experience prioritized an introduction to digital production equipment and resources on campus as well as theoretical frameworks of remix, estrangement, and place.
Secret Pittsburgh
(Debuted in Fall 2015, Ongoing)
A literature course I collaboratively proposed and individually piloted.
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This class encourages students to explore "secret" and unusual spaces of the city. Discussions require students to consider the interconnections between politics, environment, community, and texts. Readings range from spatial theory, news articles, websites, archival letters, popular histories, plays, prison memoirs, and novels. At the end of the class, students contribute to an online guidebook about the sites we visited from a firsthand perspective.
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Secret Pittsburgh Showcases
Ex: Class Exhibit, Dec 20 - Jan 31, 2015.
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Every Secret Pittsburgh class designs an end of semester showcase. In my first section of the class, I collaborated closely with the staff of the University Library. This partnership resulted in securing the opportunity for students to generate the content for five display cases in our University library.
Selecting their position on Display, Object, Screen, or Handout work teams, students collaborated to generate and curate display materials. The wonderful Hillman Library staff then helped implement the students' designs into the cases and mounted the exhibit. Being able to share their work with the rest of the campus excited the class, and their reactions to the display after it was placed on exhibit was a rewarding experience. (To see these older exhibits on our previous website, click the button below.)
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More recent sections of this course have designed showcase experiences that envelop visitors into the Secret Pittsburgh critical mode through student designed scavenger hunts, poster displays, 360-videos, interactive map displays, and games.
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As part of our response to COVID-19, which restricted student travel to physical locations and denied us the chance to host a showcase, I built an interactive ArcGIS Storymap that allows students (and other readers) to narrate their own spatial stories. The class then reflected on how contributors best evoked physical locations in digital spaces, and compared techniques to AR games, VR games, and 360-videos I constructed of the Color Park and Homestead Pump House. To see the StoryMap, click below.
Special Collections Visits: Ex. Summer 2015
I often bring my classes to utilize the University of Pittsburgh's excellent Special Collections, tailoring each visit through collaboration with the skilled Special Collection archivists. In my "The Future, Then and Now" Short Story in Context course, I brought my students to explore a selection of the University's science fiction pulp magazine, comic book, and fanzine collections. After I gave a brief lecture on the science fiction community expresed through these publications and an archivist detailed the background of our Pop-Culture collection, students spent time among the texts, working through a handout I composed that invited them to consider both content (illustrations, advertisements, stories, Q&A sections) and physical materiality. This archival experience lead into a publication paper assignment which invited students to research the history of a science fiction magazine of their choice.
I often give classes that visit Special Collections the opportunity to generate posts for the Library's Tumblr; you can see some of the Tumblr posts composed by students in my classes by clicking the button below. Please Note: I often engage students in archival research, so not all of these Tumblr posts correspond to this particular Pop-Culture experience.
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I partnered with the Digital Scholarship Services department and the Archives to instruct and support students in building their own Omeka Science Fiction exhibits. (You can view them through the button below.)
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