The Digital Archive as Argument:Enhancing Undergraduate Literary

Scholarship

Laura McGraneHaverford CollegeFebruary, 2011

Guiding Question

What is at stake in using, producing and presenting archival materials in various media forms at an undergraduate level?

Relevant Digital Collections

• ECCO (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online)• 17th-18th Century Burney Coll. Newspapers• Early American Imprints• American Periodicals Series• ARTstor• EEBO (Early English Books Online)

Integrating Historical Digital Collections into the Curriculum

• Institutional economic imperatives• Fostering the student as scholar • Enabling original research that moves beyond

a set syllabus

Importance of Prep Work

• Understanding search terms (‘ribbon’/’ribband’) (‘wig’/’periwig’)

• Discovering how database organization produces assumptions and knowledge

Search Mechanisms

Here compare the subject/genre searches.

Constructing the digital archive

Low-Tech Software

• HyperStudio• PowerPoint• WordPress• Pachyderm

Crucial components

• Multi-directional navigation• Balance between user- and architect-driven

modes of reading• Multi-media forms• Interdisciplinary texts• Student work as progress versus product• Projects that open out into the public sphere

Examples from Student Archives

What follows are screen shots from various points in student digital archives. In the “real” thing, all links are live (and many are invisible here), and allow the reader to move through primary texts and arguments freely.

Hermit Literature in Early America

This archive attempts to present and analyze various accounts of the hermit in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century America through the following lenses:

Poetic and fictional representations of the hermit, in which he becomes a romantic,

fantastical, or idealized literary figure

Accounts written about (or by) a real hermit, in which the hermit often becomes

a sort of social and/or political commentator

Annie Reading, December 2010

These categories, which separate hermit documents into those constructed by a writer’s imagination and those modeled after real hermits, work together to reveal the American hermit as a figure that reflects and refashions emerging thematic and rhetorical markers of a new American identity.

MAIN MENU

See Bibliography

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Non-Fictional Hermit AccountsEach piece of hermit literature in this archive displays at least one of the following themes. Click on a topic to explore examples in non-fictional hermit accounts. From there you will have the option to see how similar themes arise in poetic representations of hermits:

Unique Wisdom

Past Trauma

Religion

Nature

Liberty

Two Georges: Revolutionary Politics

How do George Washington and George III mirror each other in revolutionary discourse?

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Anxieties of imitation

Gastronomic Revolutions (Greg Toy, 2010)

Prior to the ratification of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, many American colonists had been engaged in political discussions and disputes regarding the taxable status of essential food items. Indeed, due to the successive English parliamentary acts that imposed tariffs on molasses, sugar, and tea, the colonists had become conscious of the social implications and political connotations of food. Although the Declaration of Independence and the following Revolutionary War effectively ended England’s egregious political control over the American diet, remnants of English culture still permeated the culinary landscape of America; though the American colonies successfully achieved political independence, they still remained culturally attached to England. Consequently, situated within this revolutionary context, this archive endeavors to conceptualize the changing relationship between England and America by examining the changing culinary landscape as depicted in popular domestic guides and cookbooks; through the juxtaposition and purposeful ordering of British and American documents, this archive traces a second revolution. (Gregory Toy, Fall 2010)

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1. Beef

2. Turkey

3. Salmon

4. American Specialties

“Most of the American fruits are extremely odoriferous, and therefore are very disgusting at first to us Europeans: on the contrary, our fruits appear insipid to them, for want of odour.”

Samuel Pegge in The Forme Of Cury (1780)

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Choosing Beef

Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Alexandria: Cottom & Stewart, 1805.(Originally published in 1747 in London. Later reprinted in America)

Simmons, Amelia. American Cookery. Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1796.

The English Way

The American Way

How would you characterize each excerpt?

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American Specialties

Simmons, Amelia. American Cookery. Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1796.

Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Alexandria: Cottom & Stewart, 1805.(Originally published in 1747 in London. Later reprinted in America)

What makes these recipes uniquely American?

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Student as Amateur Archivist/Scholar

• Archival materials as fodder for original thesis work and beyond

• Cultural literacy (students look to all collections Google Books, iTunes, museum displays) with an eye to arrangement and exclusion

• Next steps: students can become involved in larger international projects for “real” online archives and annotational work.

Outcomes

• Open out the syllabus to cultural materials• Opportunities for undergraduates to produce

genuinely new knowledge • Projects that move beyond the boundaries of

the classroom• Projects that encourage the reader/user to

roam freely, but within the constraints of an archival argument

Tri-college Digital Humanities: http://www.brynmawr.edu/tdh/

Re:Humanities http://news.haverford.edu/blogs/rehumanities/