On 19th April 2022 we discussed Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives edited by Heidi Brayman Hackel and Ian Frederick Moulton chosen by Anouska Lester. Anouska prepared the following prompts to guide our reading.

Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives examines ways of incorporating digital and physical archival resources into teaching, outline practical methods and theoretical issues. The introduction outlines differences between physical and digital archives and the terminology of “archive”. The authors define “teaching from the archives” as pedagogy incorporating “early modern printed texts and manuscripts or their facsimiles, as opposed to modern, edited texts”. 

I suggest we each read Zachary Lesser’s ‘Teaching the Metadata: Playbook History in the Undergraduate Classroom’. Since this is a short chapter, if you have time I invite you to choose a second chapter from the collection to read and summarise for the group. Most of the book is available via googlebooks.

Does your research incorporate the kinds of “archives” discussed in this volume? What about your teaching?

When and how were you introduced to EEBO and DEEP as resources?

How have you used online resources like EEBO in your classrooms? How have your students responded? 

From what I’ve read of this volume so far, I’m fascinated by the binaries that are emerging: physical and digital, edited or unedited. What are the potential gains and losses of using resources like EEBO in place of (or alongside) either physical resources or edited texts?

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