Assignment Three:

Curation: Balancing Historical Perspectives on the Publication of the Satanic Verses

Overview

In this assignment you have been tasked to design a one-room exhibition at the Museum of Tolerance about the controversy surrounding the publication of the Satanic Verses.

The introductory essay in the exhibition catalog should be illustrated with 6-8 objects that will be on display. These objects can include newspaper stories, photographs, images of artworks, or sound or video installations. At least three of the objects should be from the databases that you explored in your Smart Classroom exercise.

Each object must relate to a specific passage from The Satanic Verses, which will be printed on a small card adjoining the object. The passages should come from throughout the book rather than from a single section. You will want to give the visitor to the museum a sense of the book as a whole and the flavor of its narrative, since most of them will not have read the book, although they may have heard about the controversy.

In designing the exhibition you will be consulting with an interfaith council of advisors who represent Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant congregations in the local community.

A successful assignment will do the following:

• Analyze specific passages in Rushdie's book.
• Quote material appropriately and accurately.
• Analyze visual details in the objects that you have placed on display.
• Relate examples to each other so that your essay forms a coherent whole and develops the major themes in your exhibition.
• Avoid insensitive or biased claims that would be likely to irritate members of the interfaith council.
• Develop your explanatory essay with 4 to 6 pages of double-spaced text (not counting your illustrations)
• Be promptly submitted to turnitin.com via the UCSD TED site before the deadline.

Looking Ahead

The ability to choose significant objects of study independently is a critical component of successful research. In your final research project in CAT 3, you must be able to select texts independently and develop original research questions. Using illustrations effectively will also beimportant in many types of academic writing that you will do at UCSD, particularly in the sciences, where poster presentations largely depend on images that communicate effectively.

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