Teaching with Digital Humanities

Abstract

This book offers theoretical perspectives and case studies for teaching American literature of the long nineteenth century using the tools and methods of the digital humanities (DH). The essays highlight best methods for integrating the building of digital tools and projects in the nineteenth-century American literature classroom and strategies for incorporating into the curriculum already established digital materials. By emphasizing a discipline-specific approach, the collection invites conversations among scholars of other disciplines about how digital pedagogies can deepen their objectives for student learning. The collection is organized into five keywords, or tags: Make, Read, Recover, Archive, and Act. The essays in Make illustrate the pedagogical value of project-based, collaborative learning. The essays in Read describe assignments in which students engage in multiple reading practices, from close to collaborative and computational. In Recover, contributors show how DH approaches aid in the scholarly consideration of marginalized texts. The essays in Archive encourage students to select and organize artifacts with an ethics of care, often in communities beyond the classroom. The final section, Act, advocates for an activist approach, demonstrating how DH can bring new insights to debates central to the study of the long nineteenth century, particularly concerning difference. As they engage digital humanities practices and pedagogies, the essays in the collection model inventive strategies and rethink what is possible in the American literature classroom.