Teaching Don Quixote in the Digital Age: Page and Screen, Visual and Tactile

Abstract

This current study describes an object-based learning approach to teaching Don Quixote as part of the curriculum for Spanish majors at a small liberal arts college. In order to maximize students’ engagement with the narrative and the material culture of the novel, students worked with rare books, collaborative translation using Google Docs, digital and computational reading of the novel with Voyant Tools, iPad apps, and objects at the campus museum. The juxtaposition of the narrative, the material book, and the digital surrogates and supplements created a student-directed environment that produced an invigorated approach to textual analysis and a refinement of close reading skills.