Honestly, I have ZERO idea of what I want to do for this final. I definitely want to do something creative, I don’t know if I want to do a kind of playlist for this course? Since I have been putting songs at the end of every post, I feel like that would be good, but I would definitely struggle with the thesis for that. I’m not sure how I would tie it into the course. I think I could also do a playlist for a specific text or video we watched. I feel like making a playlist for “The Water Will Carry Us Home” would be a good one. I feel that there I would definitely need to focus on something specific, I struggle with my essays being too broad and trying to close read and stay on one topic. I want to stick with the music aspect, because other than creative writing, music is something I have a really great interest in. So, either make a song to fit the stop motion film, or a playlist that leads you through the video. Making a song would be fun! So I definitely narrowed it down to two options while writing this so that’s great!
Mermaids: Literature & the Environment
ECL 305. Fall 2025. Professor Pressman
I think a playlist is a great idea! Make the cumulative playlist of your selections from the semester, and then close read and analyze the various songs, explaining how the songs connect to the readings–even specific quotes from the texts each week– and lessons learned from the conversations we had in class. It would be a very straightforward essay, following your learning process and journey. You can even make the argument that mermaids begin with the sonic, with sirens. Go back to Homer and the Penguin editorial introductions, and make that claim. This is a great idea!