I believe students get the most out of a course and a final project when they are granted the agency to choose their own project format. In many of my seminars, I give students the choice of a traditional research paper or an alternative project. Below, you can find links to a few standout projects students have done for my classes, along with the assignment prompts they were using. All media below have been shared with the express written permission of the students who created them.

In Spring 2019, Female Divinities student Jessica Rodriguez created a final project inspired by Mexica imagery of Coatlicue and her daughter, Coyolxauhqui. She created two pieces of art based on their stories and one on the syncretism of Coatlicue with the Virgin of Guadalupe.

For The Bible and Modern Pop Culture in Summer 2021, Carson Crady responded to a final project prompt allowing students to produce their own pop culture treatment of biblical material by writing and recording this song imagining Jesus’s feelings of betrayal toward both God and Judas.

Carson’s classmate Ana Hernandez also chose to write a song. She was inspired by the genre of contemporary Christian praise music to write and record an original song about the Exodus.

Another student from the cohort, David Lee, made a short video in the style of the TV series I Survived…, where he played Job and narrated his suffering.

For the same course in Spring 2020, Zach Rodriguez made a short film about the story of Samson. He enlisted friends and family (and their towels!) to help make his movie.

For Female Divinities in Spring 2020, Emily Smith chose a unique artistic medium for her final project: she made a magazine layout about Artemis. The issue of Deity magazine included an interview with the goddess, a spotlight on the ruins of her temple, and an “Ask Artemis” advice column.

Emily’s colleague Bethany Maranto chose to record an episode for an invented-by-the-professor fictional podcast series called You’re Myth-taken about This Goddess. What made Bethany’s work so special is her decision to make her podcast about the mother-daughter goddesses Demeter and Persephone a conversation between herself and her mom (with a cameo by her brother).

A third student in the Spring 2020 cohort, Hiba Siddiqui, made her podcast episode about Athena. Athena is hardly a feminist role model, since she displayed no solidarity with other women and in one case punished a devotee for being assaulted.