MOVEMENT III · WEEK 15 · FINAL SESSION

What We Made and
What We're Seeing

WEEK 15  ·  CRDM 790  ·  Spring 2027
Format: Prospectus presentations (5–10 min each) · Week 1 Card Return · Cohort closing
Final Prospectus: Due one week after this session (see syllabus)
This is not a defense — it is a celebration with teeth
UDL COMPLIANT
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 15 · Final Session
Session Map · 3.5 Hours

Today's Arc

🎤 Prospectus Presentations (0:00–2:00)
  • 5–10 min each — timed strictly
  • No slides required; notes encouraged
  • Talk to colleagues about work you care about — not a committee performance
  • Each presentation: what you're doing, why it matters, what you're still figuring out
⟳ Break (2:00–2:15)

Pause. Breathe. You just presented your dissertation project to your cohort. That is not nothing.

🌐 Cohort Synthesis (2:15–2:45)
  • What patterns are emerging across all the projects?
  • Where do the dissertations speak to each other?
  • What does this cohort's collective intellectual project reveal about where CRDM is going?
📇 Week 1 Card Return + Closing (2:45–3:30)
  • Cards returned — 5 minutes silent writing in response
  • Go around the room: one sentence, not a summary, not a conclusion — the one thing you carry out of this room
  • Instructor closes
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 15 · Presentations
5–10 Minutes · No Slides Required

Presentation Guidelines

What to Prepare

A 5–10 minute presentation of your prospectus. Notes if you need them — no slides required. Think of it as talking to colleagues about work you care about, not performing for a committee. The room knows you. Speak to that.


Cover: what you are doing, why it matters, and what you are still figuring out. The third part is not a weakness — it is intellectual honesty, and it is what makes this a conversation rather than a report.

Optional: Bring Your Week 1 Card

If you held onto the Week 1 constellation card from your own copy, you're welcome to reference it in your presentation — 'when I started, I thought my project was about X; now I know it's actually about Y.' The arc matters.

Presentation Questions (Pick 2–3)

"What is the problem I'm working on, and why does it matter beyond my field? Who are my interlocutors — and who am I arguing against? What methodological move am I making? What am I still figuring out? Who is this for?"

The Tone

This is not a defense. It is a celebration with teeth — honest, generative, and collegial. Students who were uncertain about their research questions at the beginning are now defending them with force. The room should feel the weight of that.

Final Submission Reminder

Final prospectus due one week after this session. Submit via Moodle or email to kkcole2@ncsu.edu. Threshold grading applies — see Milestone 4 criteria.

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 15 · Presentations
Click to Reveal · or press Enter

Presentation Questions

1
What is the problem you are working on, and why does it matter beyond your field? Not 'this fills a gap' — why should someone outside CRDM care if this dissertation succeeds?
2
Who are your interlocutors — the scholars you're in conversation with, the ones you're arguing against? A dissertation without an interlocutor is talking into a void. Who are you talking to, and what are you saying they got wrong?
3
What methodological move are you making, and what does it allow you to see that other approaches don't? Not just "I use X method" — what does this method make visible that was previously invisible or unsayable?
4
What are you still figuring out? This is not a weakness. This is the live edge of the work — where the dissertation is still thinking. Show the cohort where the real problem lives.
5
Who is this for — and what do you hope it does in the world? Your 'so what' sentence from Week 12. This is the moment to say it out loud, to the room, as a claim rather than a question.
Click a question to reveal · or press Enter
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 15 · Closing Activity
Week 1 Card Return · Press A to Advance

The Cards Return

1
Return the cards
Instructor returns the Week 1 constellation cards — collected at the very first class. Each person receives the card they wrote. Don't read it yet. Hold it.
2
Read silently — 5 minutes
Read what you wrote. Who was this person? What did they think they were doing? What were they afraid of? What did they know? What did they have no idea about yet?
3
Write in response — 5 minutes
What is different? What stayed true? What question do you carry forward? Write without editing. Write to the person on the card, or to yourself now — wherever the writing needs to go.
4
Go around the room
Each person shares one sentence — not a summary, not a conclusion, not a performance. The one thing you are taking out of this room. It can be from your card, your response, your presentation, or the semester. One sentence.
5
Instructor closes
Name the transformation explicitly. What does this cohort's collective intellectual project reveal about where CRDM is going? Let the silence land after the closing. Don't rush to end. This is the end.
Step 1 of 5
Why This Works

The card is evidence of transformation. Students who were uncertain about their research questions in Week 1 are now defending them with force. That arc is the course. Name it explicitly. Let it land.

Optional: Letter to Next Cohort

Write a 300-word letter to next year's incoming CRDM cohort about what you wish you had known entering CRDM 790. Optional — but those who write it often say it clarifies what the semester actually gave them. Offer it; don't assign it.

This Moment

This moment often produces genuine emotion — let it. The room has worked together for fifteen weeks. They have argued about their fields, audited their canons, found their ghosts, built their committees, and written prospectuses that are now real. That is not small.

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 15 · The Semester
What You Did This Semester

The Full Arc

Movement I · Who Am I as a Scholar? · Weeks 1–5
Wk 1
Arrivals
Constellation Mapping
Wk 2
Critical Pedagogy
Institutional Autopsy
Wk 3
The Past Is Not Past
Wreckage & Promise Gallery
Wk 4
Who Gets to Live
Concept Translation
Wk 5
University Under Neoliberalism
Identity Statement Swap M1 · 20%
Movement II · What Do I Know and Who Helps Me Know It? · Weeks 6–10
Wk 6
Primitive Accumulation
Canon Audit
Wk 7
Hauntology
Rapid Presentations
Wk 8
Exam List Workshop
Peer Review M2 · 25%
Wk 9
Committee
Email Workshop
Wk 10
Individual Meetings
Prospectus Seed M3 · 15%
Movement III · What Will I Make and Where Am I Going? · Weeks 11–15
Wk 11
Marcuse
Draft Audit
Wk 12
Ghosh
So What? Gauntlet
Wk 13
Alt-Ac
Three Versions
Wk 14
Prospectus Workshop
Peer Workshop M4 · 40%
Wk 15
Presentations
Card Return · Closing
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 15 · Cohort Synthesis
After the Presentations · Full Group

What We're Seeing

Patterns Across the Prospectuses

After hearing all the presentations: What methodological moves, theoretical frameworks, or political commitments keep appearing? These are not coincidental — they reflect shared formation, shared questions, a shared historical moment.

Where the Dissertations Speak to Each Other

Even projects that seem radically different — different archives, different objects, different fields — are in conversation. What are the conversations the cohort didn't plan? What would happen if these dissertations read each other?

What This Cohort's Work Reveals

If these dissertations all succeed — all get written, defended, published — what will CRDM look like in five years? What will the field have that it doesn't have now? This is not a hypothetical. It is a description of what is already happening in this room.

The Closing Circle

"One sentence — not a summary, not a conclusion, not a performance. The one thing you carry out of this room."

Instructor's Close

Name the transformation explicitly. What does this cohort's collective intellectual project reveal about where CRDM is going? Let the silence land after the closing. Don't rush to end. This is the end — let it be the end.

Send the 'So What' Sentences

The real 'so what' sentences from Week 12 — collected from the Gauntlet — make a remarkable document when read together. Consider sending them back to the cohort as a shared artifact of the semester.

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 15 · After Today
After This Room

What Comes Next

◆
Final Prospectus — Due One Week After Today · 40%

Submit via Moodle (PDF or Word preferred) or email to kkcole2@ncsu.edu. Use the feedback from Week 14. Make the revision you committed to in the closing circle. This is how the semester ends — not in the room, but in the writing.

📇
Keep Your Week 1 Card

Take it home. Keep it near the prospectus. The person on the card had questions you're now answering. The person you are now will be on someone else's card someday — in office hours, in a dissertation, in the way you teach. That transmission is the point.

✉️
Contact Your Committee

Send a note to your chair and readers — not as a formality, but as an intellectual act. Tell them what you heard at the presentations. Tell them what changed in the prospectus since you last spoke. This is the beginning of the working relationship the degree requires.

🌱
Now Write the Dissertation

The prospectus was never the end — it was the argument for the beginning. You know the problem. You know your interlocutors. You know your 'so what.' The committee is confirmed. The exam list is drafted. The imagination has been audited. Now write.

"What is different? What stayed true? What do you carry forward?"

CRDM 790 · Movement III · Week 15 · Final Session

What We Made and What We’re Seeing

Prospectus presentations · Week 1 card return · Cohort closing. This is not a defense — it is a celebration with teeth.

Format: presentations (5–10 min each) · card return · closing Final prospectus due one week after this session

Session Map — 3.5 Hours

🎤 Prospectus Presentations (0:00–2:00)

5–10 min each — timed strictly. No slides required; notes encouraged. Each: what you’re doing, why it matters, what you’re still figuring out. Talk to colleagues about work you care about — not a committee performance.

↻ Break (2:00–2:15)

Pause. Breathe. You just presented your dissertation project to your cohort. That is not nothing.

🌎 Cohort Synthesis (2:15–2:45)

What patterns are emerging? Where do the dissertations speak to each other? What does this cohort’s collective project reveal about where CRDM is going?

📇 Week 1 Card Return + Closing (2:45–3:30)

Cards returned — 5 min silent writing. Go around the room: one sentence, the one thing you carry out. Instructor closes. Let the silence land.

Presentation Guidelines

What to prepare

A 5–10 minute presentation of your prospectus. Notes if you need them — no slides required. Cover: what you are doing, why it matters, and what you are still figuring out. The third part is not a weakness — it is intellectual honesty, and it is what makes this a conversation rather than a report.

The tone

This is not a defense. It is a celebration with teeth — honest, generative, and collegial. Students who were uncertain about their research questions at the beginning are now defending them with force. The room should feel the weight of that.

Final submission reminder

Final prospectus due one week after this session. Submit via Moodle or email to kkcole2@ncsu.edu. Threshold grading applies — see Milestone 4 criteria.

Presentation Questions — Pick 2–3

1
What is the problem you are working on, and why does it matter beyond your field?
Not “this fills a gap” — why should someone outside CRDM care if this dissertation succeeds?
2
Who are your interlocutors — the scholars you’re in conversation with, the ones you’re arguing against?
A dissertation without an interlocutor is talking into a void. Who are you talking to, and what are you saying they got wrong?
3
What methodological move are you making, and what does it allow you to see that other approaches don’t?
Not just “I use X method” — what does this method make visible that was previously invisible?
4
What are you still figuring out?
This is not a weakness. This is the live edge of the work — where the dissertation is still thinking. Show the cohort where the real problem lives.
5
Who is this for — and what do you hope it does in the world?
Your ‘so what’ sentence from Week 12. Say it out loud, to the room, as a claim rather than a question.

Week 1 Card Return

1
Return the cards
Instructor returns the Week 1 constellation cards — collected at the very first class. Each person receives the card they wrote. Don’t read it yet. Hold it.
2
Read silently — 5 minutes
Read what you wrote. Who was this person? What did they think they were doing? What were they afraid of? What did they know? What did they have no idea about yet?
3
Write in response — 5 minutes
What is different? What stayed true? What question do you carry forward? Write without editing — to the person on the card, or to yourself now.
4
Go around the room
Each person shares one sentence — not a summary, not a conclusion, not a performance. The one thing you are taking out of this room.
5
Instructor closes
Name the transformation explicitly. Let the silence land after the closing. Don’t rush to end. This is the end — let it be the end.
Optional: Letter to Next Cohort

Write a 300-word letter to next year’s incoming CRDM cohort about what you wish you had known entering CRDM 790. Optional — but those who write it often say it clarifies what the semester actually gave them.

The Full Semester Arc

Wk 1–5
Movement I — Who Are We and What Do We Think?
Giroux · Benjamin · Mbembe · Brown. Constellation Mapping · Institutional Autopsy · Wreckage Gallery · Concept Translation · Identity Statement Swap. ◆ M1: Scholarly Identity (20%)
Wk 6–10
Movement II — What Do I Know and Who Helps Me Know It?
Federici · Fisher · Derrida · Haraway · Kelsky. Canon Audit · Rapid Presentations · Exam List Workshop · Email Workshop · Prospectus Seed. ◆ M2 (25%) · M3 (15%)
Wk 11–15
Movement III — What Will I Make and Where Am I Going?
Marcuse · Ghosh. Draft Audit · So What? Gauntlet · Three Versions · Prospectus Workshop · Presentations + Card Return. ◆ M4: Dissertation Prospectus (40%)

Cohort Synthesis

Patterns across the prospectuses

What methodological moves, theoretical frameworks, or political commitments keep appearing? These reflect shared formation, shared questions, a shared historical moment.

Where the dissertations speak to each other

Even radically different projects are in conversation. What are the conversations the cohort didn’t plan? What would happen if these dissertations read each other?

The closing circle
“One sentence — not a summary, not a conclusion, not a performance. The one thing you carry out of this room.”

What Comes Next

◆ Final Prospectus — Due One Week After Today
Milestone 4 — 40% of Final Grade

Submit via Moodle (PDF or Word preferred) or email kkcole2@ncsu.edu. Use the Week 14 workshop feedback. Make the revision you committed to in the closing circle.

Keep your Week 1 card
  • Take it home. Keep it near the prospectus. The person on the card had questions you’re now answering. The transmission is the point.
Contact your committee
Not as a formality — as an intellectual act.

Tell them what you heard at the presentations. Tell them what changed in the prospectus since you last spoke. This is the beginning of the working relationship the degree requires.

“What is different? What stayed true? What do you carry forward?”