Abstract
Students confronted by Milton often find themselves intimidated; getting students involved in research can help motivate them to persevere while giving them a chance to contribute to scholarship outside their classrooms. This chapter suggests ways to involve students in digital research to help make the study of Milton and his works more accessible. The Edifice Project designed by Ainsworth may allow students to take ownership of something beyond an end-of-term assessment and create a sense of continuous community across multiple courses. Ainsworth argues that the richness of Milton’s poetry and prose makes his work especially fit for student digital research.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, see Sandra Laursen, et al., Undergraduate Research in the Sciences: Engaging Students in Real Science (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 2–7.
- 2.
English Broadside Ballad Archive University of California, Santa Barbara (2010–) <ebba.english.ucsb.edu>. Accessed 28 December 2017. For examples of collaborations between the Map of Early Modern London project and classes of students at many different institutions, see “Teaching with MoEML,” The Map of Early Modern London, ed. Janelle Jenstad, University of Victoria (n.d.) <mapoflondon.uvic.ca/teaching.htm>. Accessed 13 July 2017.
- 3.
The John Milton Reading Room Dartmouth College (1997–) <dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/contents/text.shtml/>. Accessed 13 July 2017. All citations of Paradise Lost are from this edition. See further Cordelia Zukerman’s Chap. 2 in this volume.
- 4.
Quoted from John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 633.
- 5.
For a much lengthier look at the place of reading and truth in Milton, see Chap. 1 of my book Milton and the Spiritual Reader: Reading and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Routledge, 2008).
- 6.
For some idea of the pedagogical challenges as well as strategies to address them, see Approaches to Teaching Milton’s Shorter Poetry and Prose, ed. Peter C. Herman (New York: Modern Language Association, 2007) and Approaches to Teaching Milton’s Paradise Lost, ed. Peter C. Herman, 2nd ed. (New York: Modern Language Association, 2012).
- 7.
Edifice Project University of Alabama (2009–) <http://edificeproject.ua.edu/>. Accessed 13 July 2017.
- 8.
Composition studies has established the value of model texts that students can emulate. See, for example, Michael Bunn, “Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading (and Writing) in the Composition Classroom,” CCCC 64, no. 3 (2014): 496–516.
- 9.
Recent studies demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching archival research in undergraduate classrooms, with that work making students feel included in the community of researchers. See Wendy Hayden, “‘Gifts’ of the Archives: A Pedagogy for Undergraduate Research,” CCCC 66, no. 3 (2015): 402–26. The course research library is a necessarily limited archive, but its use does not preclude students performing other archival work, and it has the advantage that students can see their own work as a part of the larger archive: they are not archival consumers, but researchers.
- 10.
These podcasts can be found on the Edifice website at <edificeproject.ua.edu/?page_id=143/>.
- 11.
These meetings augment, not replace, the traditional student evaluations of the course, and they focus on its collaborative elements and not on an evaluation of my own teaching.
Works Cited
Ainsworth, David. Milton and the Spiritual Reader: Reading and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Bunn, Michael. “Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading (and Writing) in the Composition Classroom.” CCCC 64, no. 3 (2014): 496–516.
The Edifice Project. 2009–. University of Alabama. <http://edificeproject.ua.edu/>. Accessed 13 July 2017.
English Broadside Ballad Archive. 2010–. University of California, Santa Barbara. <ebba.english.ucsb.edu>. Accessed 13 July 2017.
Hayden, Wendy. “‘Gifts’ of the Archives: A Pedagogy for Undergraduate Research,” CCCC 66, no. 3 (2015): 402–26.
Herman, Peter C., ed. Approaches to Teaching Milton’s Shorter Poetry and Prose. New York: Modern Language Association, 2007.
———. ed. Approaches to Teaching Milton’s Paradise Lost. New York: Modern Language Association, 2012.
The John Milton Reading Room. 1997–. Dartmouth College. <dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/contents/text.shtml/>. Accessed 13 July 2017.
“Teaching with MoEML.” n.d. The Map of Early Modern London, edited by Janelle Jenstad. University of Victoria. <mapoflondon.uvic.ca/teaching.htm>. Accessed 13 July 2017.
Laursen, Sandra, Anne-Barrie Hunter, Elaine Seymour, Heather Thiry, and Ginger Melton. Undergraduate Research in the Sciences: Engaging Students in Real Science. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010.
Milton, John. Complete Poems and Major Prose, edited by Merritt Y. Hughes. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
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Ainsworth, D. (2018). Digital Milton and Student Research. In: Currell, D., Issa, I. (eds) Digital Milton. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90478-8_9
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