Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives

Cover of Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives

The volume brilliantly combines the visionary and the pragmatic and is a gold mine of great ideas about how to engage students in the production of knowledge. It is a remarkably timely project.

–Michael Schoenfeldt, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

The availability of digital editions of early modern works brings a wealth of exciting archival and primary source materials into the classroom. But electronic archives can be overwhelming and hard to use, for teachers and students alike, and digitization can distort or omit information about texts.Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives places traditional and electronic archives in conversation, outlines practical methods for incorporating them into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, and addresses the theoretical issues involved in studying them. The volume discusses a range of physical and virtual archives from 1473 to 1700 that are useful in the teaching of early modern literature—both major sources and rich collections that are less known (including affordable or free options for those with limited institutional resources).

Although the volume focuses on English literature and culture, essays discuss a wide range of comparative approaches involving Latin, French, Spanish, German, and early American texts and explain how to incorporate visual materials, ballads, domestic treatises, atlases, music, and historical documents into the teaching of literature.

Volume editors
Heidi Brayman Hackel
Ian Frederick Moulton

Contributors
Jennifer Bowers, Sheila Cavanagh, Simone Chess, Angelica Duran, Joshua Eckhardt, Jeremy Ehrlich, Patrick M. Erben, Patricia Fumerton, Tassie Gniady, Peter C. Herman, W. Scott Howard, Janelle Jenstad, Peggy Keeran, Erin Kelly, Rebecca Laroche, Zachary Lesser, Shawn Martin, Kris McAbee, Laura McGrane, Irene Middleton, Joseph M. Ortiz, Katherine Rowe, Marjorie Rubright, Arnold Sanders, Gitanjali Shahani, Evelyn Tribble, Phillip John Usher, Sarah Werner, Heather Wolfe, Georgianna Ziegler

Pages: xii & 274 pp.
Published: 2015
ISBN: 9781603291569 (paperback)
ISBN: 9781603291552 (cloth)

This volume is available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book formats. Visit the MLA bookstore for more information.