Pedagogy in Theory

Teaching Romanticism in a...Library?

This past August I was hired by Emory University as a Mellon Fellow for their Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC). The Commons is funded by a grant, and is charged with increasing the opportunities for digital scholarship on campus. We also help develop two large-scale digital projects per semester. This semester, for example, we are involved in "Lynching in Georgia 1875-1930" (a project chronicling the many lynchings that took place in the state of Georgia) and "Commonwealth" (an update to the Postcolonial Theory website maintained by Emory University).

Pedagogies Blog Categories: 

Down & Dirty Frankenstein

I posted a blog last month about re-instating Frankenstein into my British Literature Survey course 1800-present. With most of our blogs here, that one was more fully formed than what I'm about to post. So, this constitutes my foray into brainstorming blogging rather than essaying blogging:

Pedagogies Blog Categories: 

Scribd, the Collaborative Classroom, and the Paperless Blake Class

Like Kate Singer, I too have been thinking about the rise of the Digital Humanities at MLA 2011. I agree, largely, that making should be a hallmark of identifying as a digital humanist but - like Kate - I wonder if making is limited to coding. Building or making may refer to the construction of scholarly and student communities.  Matt Kirschenbaum in "What is Digital Humanities and What's it Doing in English Departments?" makes the following claim:

Whatever else it might be then, the digital humanities today is about a scholarship (and a pedagogy) that is publicly visible in ways to which we are generally unaccustomed, a scholarship and pedagogy that are bound up with infrastructure in ways that are deeper and more explicit than we are generally accustomed to, a scholarship and pedagogy that are collaborative and depend upon networks of people and that live an active 24/7 life online. Isn't that something you want in your English Department?

Pedagogies Blog Categories: 

Blake 2.0, Collaborative Learning, and Collective Intelligence

For my Spring class on "Blake 2.0," I've decided to engage in collaborative learning and model forms of collective intelligence. I like my assignments to have two separate characteristics. First, I like to show students that they can accomplish great things if they work together. Second, I like my students to produce something of value, something that they can be proud of after the end of the semester.

Pedagogies Blog Categories: 

Why Teach Romanticism? Reflections on Course Objectives

Diedre, Eric and Crystal have all given compelling reasons for a contemporary "in" to Romantic literature. Diedre's stunning example of a student connecting "The Negro's Complaint" to poets in Singapore was complemented by her admission that she is "(still) a historicist critic." Crystal's argument that we should not let contemporary texts replace the focus of the course on "primary sources themselves," is an important rejoinder to keep historicism at the core of what teachers of the Romantic period do.

How do we, though, justify a Romantics course when we aren't primarily teaching survey or period courses? Is there, in other words, a purpose to teaching Romanticism that isn't contained within a historical survey?

Here's my reasoning.

Pedagogies Blog Categories: 

Teaching Collaboration around Romantic Individualism

As a scholar and a teacher, I enjoy experimenting with both individual and collaborative projects. I tend to feel that the humanities are unique in their ambivalence about collaboration. On the one hand, the web is offering humanities scholars many opportunities for collaboration; on the other hand, I always find myself wondering how much a collaborative article, project, or book will "count" when it comes to hiring or tenure.

The topic is especially interesting for someone who teaches the Romantic period, since Romanticism is often associated with individualism. And yet, Romantic authors also expressed collectivist sentiments. As Beth Lau points out, even famously individualistic male Romantic writers struggled with individualism:

Pedagogies Blog Categories: 

Subscribe to RSS - Pedagogy in Theory