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Exploring the Digital Humanities for Teachers of English

Spring 2016 Humanities Day Workshop

Part 1: Engaging with Word History Online

Instructor:: Sayre N. Greenfield, Chair of the Humanities Division and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg

When and Where:: 7 May 2016 from 9:30am to 10:45am; The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Cassell Hall 205

List of Websites for Engaging with Word History Online

Google Ngram Viewer:: https://books.google.com/ngrams
Open Source Shakespeare:: http://opensourceshakespeare.org/search/search-keyword.php
Bodleian First Folio: http://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
Folger Shakespeare Library: http://www.folger.edu/publishing-shakespeare#firstfolio
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (MIT): http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

Part 2: Teaching with Online Annotation Tools

Instructor:: Elisa E. Beshero-Bondar, Director of the Center for the Digital Text and Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg; Course Materials and Projects

When and Where:: 7 May 2016 from 11am to 12:30pm; The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Cassell Hall 205

Gabriel Harvey’s Annotations on Lodovico Domenichi’s Facetie

Sixteenth-century English writer Gabriel Harvey’s annotations on a copy of Lodovico Domenichi’s Facetie at the Folger Institute. Click on the picture to read a modern-day editor’s annotations of Harvey’s Renaissance annotations. Source: collation.folger.edu.

Introduction to annotations, paratexts, and their target audiences

Paratext (Gerard Genette): text that steps in to mediate between a book and its readers: the writing on the cover, the preface, the postcript, the footnotes, the endnotes
- See Gerard Genette and Marie Maclean, "Introduction to the Paratext" New Literary History 22:2 (1991) page 268.
Discourse communities (Stanley Fish, "Is there a Text in this Class?"): on the making of texts by communities in the act of reading
Annotations: readers’ marks on the pages. Purposes and functions?
- ink and paper
- digital (offline)
- web (online)
- proprietary vs. open annotation. Lit Genius and hypothes.is
Reading as a Social Act
Annotations piling on: a community gathering around a text:
- Class Examples (Hypothesis): Hypothesis annotations on Bartleby.com’s version of Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Project Gutenberg's version of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Annotations are by Pitt-Greensburg students in autumn 2015
- Example: Lit Genius, annotated edition of Ozymandias
- Example: Lit Genius edition of Byron’s Darkness
- Issues?

Activity: Set up an Hypothesis Account

Go to https://hypothes.is/
Follow the Quick Start Guide for Teachers
Install the Chrome extension or set up the bookmarklet in your web browsers.

Activity: Annotate a Literary Text on the Web

Read Annotation Tips for Students.

Choose a text to annotate from among the following sites:

Anna Barbauld, The Caterpillar (1825)
Select a poem from Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798)
Choose some paragraphs from the opening chapter of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898)
Or annotate some passages from Orson Welles’ radio script of The War of the Worlds (1938)

Go to the Hypothesis site and paste the link to your site in the Hypothesis page to begin annotating, or install the Google Chrome Hypothesis plug-in so you can annotate directly on the site.

For this annotation exercise, we will work on preparing explanatory notes. Look for at least three opportunities to identify and explain unfamiliar words, concepts, or proper names. Look up information to help identify the proper name, locate something on a map, or provide an interesting illustration.

Draft annotations by highlighting a short passage (ideally just a word or a few words). Annotations tend to be most helpful when they are anchored to very specific points in a text to explain. Your annotations shouldn’t just give an opinion on how to read the passage, but should provide some specific information that helps us to visualize or understand the passage better. Include links and images in at least one of your annotations.

Add a tag to your annotations to help identify our workshop as a group. Use the tag #UPGHumDay.

When you are finished with your annotations, look for annotations written by another of us in the room, and add a comment to their annotations, to start a conversation about the text, ask a question, add information, link outward, participate in a collective effort.

Activity: Review and Reflect on Annotation Writing

What did you discover about the reading and writing process in the act of annotating?
How might annotation be useful to train the reading eye?
Can annotations improve students reading and writing precision?
What kinds of research activities can be facilitated through annotation?
Should annotation be used as a kind of online class discussion? Or what range of uses can you identify for this kind of writing?
How can you control the publicity of annotations? (See the Education page on Creating a Private Group.) Should annotations be shared only within a class, or should they be available to wider communities beyond your classroom? Should they be fully public?
What issues or potential problems do you find with online annotation?

Sample Annotation Assignments (with objectives)

Fall 2014 "Adopt a Poem" Annotation Assignment (Lit Genius)
- Mary Robinson, "The Poet’s Garrett" (1800) annotated by students
Hypothesis: Ongoing Annotation Assignment (for daily reading)
My Adopt a Poem assignment transferred to Hypothesis
See also several other assignments on the Hypothesis Teacher Resource Guide.

Resources

Hypothesis

Lit Genius and Education Genius

A Teacher’s Guide to Genius: See especially the annotation on Privacy vs. Openness
A Student’s Guide to Genius (advice on well-written annotations)
Examples of Student Work (many high school examples)
Pitt-Greensburg 19th-century Brit Lit Class Page on Lit Genius
Sample student page on Genius