The basics of a good interview: 

1. Even if you have a chance to record an interview, back it up with notes in your notebook. You never know when technology will fail you.

2. Learn as much as you can about the subject – time permitting – BEFORE you conduct the interview. Go in prepared.

3. Bring into the interview a list of questions in the general order you want to ask them. You may want to save a tougher question until the end.

4. During the interview, do not be tied to your list of questions. Listen, listen and listen. Let the subject know you are listening by maintaining eye contact, nodding your head, leaning forward and taking notes.

5. Write down in your notebook the key words and phrases you will need for writing your story.

6. If the subject is speaking too fast, don’t be afraid to say “Please give me a second; I want to write that down.” Or, “That sounds important; can you please say it again?”

7. As soon as you can after the interview, look at your notes. Fill them out from memory. Type them out on a data sheet so you can get at them more easily.

8. Annotate your notes. That is, mark them with stars or arrows or marginalia such as “this quote good for end of story.”

9. Don’t just write down what you hear, write down what you see.

10. Be polite and respectful, even to subjects who may be grumpy or difficult to deal with.

11. Arrive early to check out the scene; stay late to gather final thoughts.

12. Call back a source to gather something you missed or to check the accuracy of something you are not sure of.

Three bonus tips:

*Ask one question at a time. This isn’t multiple choice.

*Ask open-ended questions, not ones that can be answered yes or no.

*Be patient. Don’t break the silence with a new question.
Find at least one person per section to interview. (I won't cry over more.)

Go to the Popular Culture/American Culture site to start to look for experts.

You can also try IMBD.

You can also try finding the people who write, podcast, film or anything else about your artifact and the issues surrounding it.

Take a look at some of these videos

And  . . . Just shut up

Brown chicken brown cow

Here is a great site for people working on a dissertation but it works your project, too. 

This is an important way to think about your project.

But don't fall in love with all of your ideas and here is why:

From the site GearFire

Consume relevant content.

The first step is to expose yourself to material related to your subject more regularly. You can do this in a passive way with not much effort by incorporating your topic into your feed reader or listening to the radio.

• Find and follow relevant blogs and podcasts. New material will be delivered straight to your feed reader or iTunes. This is an easy and non-intrusive way to begin filtering the subject matter into your life. (Aspiring maths students, for example, might enjoy Vi Hart’s blog, The Math Dude, or Tim Harford’s podcast More or Less.)
• Keep up to date. It’s easy to set up a Google Alert to keep on top of recent developments. Tracking tags on popular blogging and bookmarking sites like WordPress or Delicious can also lead to some interesting discoveries. (Try tracking geology or programming, for example.)
• Find and use small pockets of time. The ten minutes before class or the bus ride to work may as well be useful: keep your iPod or Kindle stocked up with podcasts, e-books, and articles to read during your free moments. You could also try borrowing books or magazines from friends, teachers, or your library.

Repurpose “time-wasting” sites and make them work for you.

BLABLA

As students, we are constantly trying to spend less time on Facebook, Twitter, forums, and blogs. Tools like LeechBlock and Chrome Nanny help us curb those habits, but what if we could use them to our advantage?

• Create a Tumblr blog centered around a subject. Keep your eyes peeled for new and interesting content—you never know what you might find! A project like this allows you to view the subject through other people’s eyes—and no post is too silly! (This is particularly good for music students. Searching for content for my own flute-related Tumblr, F Yeah, Flute! has inspired me to practice and introduced me to heaps of new and amazing pieces.)
• Use Twitter creatively. Of course, you can follow professionals and leaders in your field, and interact with classmates, but what about practicing your conversational foreign language skills in small, manageable chunks (the Esperanto community is especially friendly); or tweeting from the persona of a character (like Hamlet) or historical figure (like Edgar Allan Poe)?
• Participate in relevant forums. Two of the most effective ways to learn are by teaching somebody else or by participating in a discussion. Australian students completing their HSC or VCE can use the Bored of Studies forums to help other students with their questions and solidify their understanding of a topic, and students in other areas may be able to find similar online mediums.

Find ways to confront yourself with material.

The more often you see that formula, the more likely you are to remember it! Plaster your life with constant reminders, facts, and figures.

• Put up posters in the places you frequent or see often. The poster on the toilet wall is a tried-and-tested approach—and the entire household can learn together! Other places you could consider include your bedroom wall (or even roof), the front of your planner, or the fridge door. 

Exposing yourself to a wider range of material has the potential to deepen your appreciation, passion, and understanding of and for your subject—and is an easy, quick and unobtrusive way of utilizing the tools you already use. I hope it helps you look at your studies in a new and unique way!

Thinking about Critical Analysis

Thinking about Critical Analysis

• The steps below are only in a suggested order.  Prepare by reading/watching/listening to all material thoroughly. Understanding what you have to analyze is crucial. As you read, make notes of the following:

• Identify the author’s thesis. What is she arguing for/against?
• Identify the context of the argument. Why is he arguing this?
• Do they offer a solution to the problem(s) they raise? Does it seem plausible?
• Note any supporting evidence and all of the main ideas. How does the author support her argument?
• What kind of appeals does the author make in order to persuade the reader? For example, does he use: pathos (appeal to emotion), logos (appeal to reason/logic), and/or ethos (appeal to credibility)?
• Note your responses to the reading. Do any questions arise? How effective does the artifact appear?

Essential Questions for Each Specific Critical Perspective

When viewing a text through a specific critical lens, use these questions to guide your analysis. 

 Deconstruction Essential Questions:

• What is the relationship of the title to the rest of the work?
• What words need to be defined?
• What relationships or patterns do you see among any words in the text?
• What are the various connotative meanings words in the text may have?
• What allusions, if any, are in the text?
• What symbols, images, and figures of speech are used?
• What is the tone of the work and from what point of view is it being told?
• What tensions, ambiguities, or paradoxes arise within the text?
• How do all the elements of the text support and develop the overall theme?

Social Class Essential Questions:

• Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
• What is the social class of the author?
• Which class does the work claim to represent?
• What values does it reinforce?
• What values does it subvert?
• What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays?
• What social classes do the characters represent?
• How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

Cultural Criticism Questions:

• How are events' interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
• How does the text function as part of a continuum with other cultural texts from the same period?
• How can we use a literary work to "map" the interplay of both traditional and subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or the cultures in which the work has been interpreted?
• How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?

Gender Conflict Essential Questions:

• How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
• What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
• How are male and female roles defined?
• What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
• How do characters embody these traits?
• Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
• What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
• What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
• What does the work say about women's creativity? Men’s ambition? The androgynous dichotomy?
• What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy?
• What role does the work play in terms of gender literary history and literary tradition?

Psychoanalytic Criticism Essential Questions:

• How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?
• Are there any oedipal dynamics - or any other family dynamics - at work here?
• How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example...fear or fascination with death, sexuality - which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior - as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
• What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
• What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader?
• Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using these "problem words"? 

Project details

The project must have the following contents:

• The Introduction 
• Historical section
• Social section 
• Cultural  section   
• Political section  
• Economics section
• The Conclusion 

An introductory page

·      It is similar to the proposal and outlines your givens and your questions. 

•  Include an introduction to the sections
• Includes some introductory background like what might be found on the back of a movie or a summary from the web. This, of course, is your own work.
• Start with the iconography of the artifact for your graphics
• This is where you can link to most well-known of your sources that discusses your artifact as important
• This is where you will pose the questions you want to ask of the artifact. 

Pages/Chapters

• 1 page per section
• Break your sections into topics for each and create new pages as needed
• Each section needs to have a minimum of five external links that will give more depth to your particular discussion without you going into too much external detail. This is where you don’t have to do all of the writing but explain why this link is important to your questions and givens.

How to figure out what to link to:

Don’t just link to others’ work situate it so people know why you think this is important. You are also “curating” this site. Content curating is a skill that shows up in a lot of comm job descriptions these days and a cool word to through around in job interviews.

• Fan sites and fan fic
• Academic work
• News articles
• Interviews (appropriately categorized)
• Pop culture references (This shows up in your cultural section)
• Artistic work based on the artifact (remakes, art work, operas, books)
• Books about the artifact (link to reviews and the Amazon site)

You will also include your bibliography and link everything in the bib as best you can.

If you have done any ORIGINAL research make it a separate page and call it “original sources” It would be smart to photograph the person if this happens in person or ask for a photo you can use if you are doing a “phoner”.  Include the transcript (if interviewing through any chat this is easy) and if you are doing the phoner record the interview and make it available on the site. Even if you don’t use everything in the writing someone else might find the conversation useful and you could be cited next!