By: Ian Byers
Deciding how exactly to do this project was difficult for me, I even chose to use my extension on this assignment so I had more time to think about it. I’ve decided to focus my project on one of the central themes of the musical, immigration. This is also a subject that has dominated much of the ongoing discussion about the show. There are a few other people in this class that are also covering immigration in relation to Hamilton, which made me hesitant to do so as well. However, I expected for this to be the case, and I’m confident that my adaptation will be significantly different from others’ projects. Additionally, after thinking about the various conversations about Hamilton, this was the easily the topic that I thought I would enjoy working with the most.
As for the specifics of my project, I plan to have two parts. First, I am going to do some intensive research, with skills that I learned in this class, and compile historical documents written by the founding fathers about immigration and related topics, and how they relate to characters featured in Hamilton. I will also make a timeline of major changes to American immigration policy as well as public opinion on the topic. To finish up this section of my project, I will make a short report with a statistical analysis of certain areas which have received high levels of immigration over the last 50 years. This report will cover various elements of multiculturalism, cultural enrichment, etc.
The second part of my project will be more directly related to both the original songs of Hamilton and those on the mix-tape. The obvious candidates are Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down) and Immigrants (We Get the Job Done). However, I don’t plan to necessarily use these songs, at least in their entirety, as I expect that others are already going to do that and I don’t want to make things too repetitive. Therefore, I will use some other songs off of the mix-tape as well. Using small sections of these songs, I will create a short video which is a visual representation of the first part of my project. This way, I can cover multiple elements of communication.
For the skills required to complete this project, I will have to use research and video editing skills. I have done a decent amount of video editing before so I estimate that this will not take me more than a few hours. The research will also take some time as I will need to find varied and balanced sources, and then find the best format to present the findings. Potential difficulties in this project are ensuring that my project is sufficiently unique from other similar projects, and also making sure to make the final result easily understood by a varied audience.