Forget the traditional linear outline, romance author Jennifer Crusie has a rather original way of getting inspiration for her works. For each of her stories, Crusie creates a one-of-a-kind 3-D Collage from which she “[starts] with the details and glues them together into one big picture.” This method of brainstorming helps her interpret her stories in a different medium rather than text on the page, and allows for both a macro and micro view of the plot and characters. Many of Crusie’s collages are housed at McDaniel College, and at least two are regularly on display in the Reading Room of Hoover Library on campus.
Recently, Cristal Renzo, Associate Professor of English at Harrisburg Area Community College’s (HACC) Gettysburg Campus, took her own inspiration from Crusie’s collages, bringing them out of special collections and into her own classroom.
After putting two of Crusie’s loaned collages on display in the library and taking her classes to see and discuss them, Renzo had her students create their own 3-D Collages to interpret themes from a text they were studying in the course. Students identified a central theme from Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and created collages to represent that theme, pulling details from not only the book but also their own experiences.
The collages were exhibited in a reception on HACC’s campus, where students had the opportunity to talk about their work with visitors and their classmates, explaining the decisions they made and describing the lessons they learned in creating the collages. One student remarked that it helped her engage more fully with the text than if she had been simply asked to write a paper, noting that it required her to make connections she normally wouldn’t have thought of.
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