, you’ll need to produce a Wiki about one of the following figures:
Ludwig van Beethoven
George Gordon Byron
Catherine the Great
Michael Madhusudan Dutt
Benjamin Franklin
Hiraga Gennai
The Brothers Grimm
Thomas Jefferson
Ram Mohan Roy
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Mary Shelley
Mary Somerville
Henry David Thoreau
Richard Wagner
Each of them represents either the Enlightenment or the Romantic movement and your job is to build a wiki telling their life story and their major contributions to world history. You’re also going to need to explain whether they were part of the Enlightenment or Romanticism. Your wiki should include a mix of pictures and text. Ideally, it will come in at around 1500 words and will include at least three images that illustrate the points you’re making. You MUST also include a works cited page and cite your sources to get credit. You can get instructions on how to do that in your style guide, but I can help you out if you need it. You can use whatever resources you can find, but I strongly recommend you stick to academically rigorous material. I can help you with that, the librarians are available even though campus is closed, and you can still log into the library website and see what they have for ebooks or journals. Wikipedia and its clones are off limits.
To put this into perspective, think of this as if you’re creating a museum exhibit about your subject. You want to explain things as clearly as you can and it should be easy enough to follow that a random person could walk into your museum (or log onto your website) and learn about whoever you wrote about. You also don’t want to get bogged down in insignificant details. To use an obvious example, Thomas Jefferson’s presidency is quite important; his shoe size is not. However, keep in mind that the vast majority of people are famous for only one or two things, they were all involved in more than you might realize. Some of their most important contributions might not be what they’re famous for.
The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for a topic on the wiki. To do that, click on the edit button on the page below and put your name next to the person you want to work on. I’ll leave the choice up to you, but I’d ask that no more than three people pick the same person. Also, fair warning: Hiraga Gennai, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and Ram Mohan Roy will be a bit harder than the other topics. They’re fascinating topics, but the source material will be tougher to find, especially sources in English. I still want solid work if you pick them, but I know they’re considerably more difficult and I will take that into account. Signups should be done by this coming Wednesday (Feb. 7) night. The assignment will be due on April 1 at 11:59:59 PM, eastern time.
Finally, you’ll need some context for this. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Europe went through a period of intense academic productivity. This was an era where people placed a lot of emphasis on science, mathematics, and philosophy, where they drew on the legacies of ancient Greece, Rome, India, and China. People believed that if enough intelligent people got together and thought long enough they could solve the world’s problems. This includes outstanding scientific problems as well as improving society as a whole.
Romanticism represented the backlash to this. They saw science and technology as harmful because they separated people from nature. The Romantics could be highly intellectual, but they tended to value emotions more, especially negative emotions, which they tried to explore through their art. They drew inspiration from cultures that they believed were “primitive” – Native Americans, Africans, Polynesians, medieval Europeans – because they assumed their lives were simpler, more free, and more in tune with their environment.
Keep in mind that some people on the list can fit in both categories. It’s up to you to figure out where they belong.
