Northeastern University, English Department

Spring 2015T 3:30-5:45Holmes 400B

Professor Marina LeslieE-Mail: m.leslie@neu.eduOffice: 407 Holmes HallOffice Hrs: Thursdays 11:30-1:00

Class Website: http://www.northeastern.edu/openingthearchive/

Image: Holland House Library after an air raid (1940) Ref: BB83/04456 © English Heritage

ENGL 7351: Opening the Archive 2.0

Overview

This course showcases the rich archival holdings of print materials in the greater Boston area to offer training in the materials, methods, and theories of primary source research. We will visit three remarkable research institutions we have here in the Boston area: the Boston Public Library, The Massachusetts Historical Society, and Harvard’s Houghton Library in order to become more familiar with their unique collections and particular protocols. In class we will examine the complex traffic between self-consciously literary texts and other artifacts drawn from print culture along multiple trajectories: One will follow the uses and transformations of source material in Shakespeare’s most “contemporary” play, The Tempest.  A second will track important reinventions and transformations of The Tempest to assess how adaptations negotiate their complex literary legacies with (and/or against) the multivalent historical, political, and aesthetic contexts of their own production.  A third will seek to incorporate theories of the archive to dramatize the range of working definitions and the methodological challenges that are invoked by the theorists we are reading and to enable students to theorize their own research practices. Grades will be based on two research-based exercises that we will workshop in class and a final research grant proposal on a topic of your choice related to your own research agenda.

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Goals

It is the aim of this class to enable you to develop the following:

n Familiarity with the collections and protocols for research in several Boston area archives

n Conversancy with some of theoretical questions that inform archival research

n A body of clear, thoughtful, original writing that engages some of the practical and theoretical concerns of archival research

n A potential grant proposal to support a research project, drawing on archival resources in the area or beyond

Requirements

1. Everyone in this class, who doesn’t already have one, will need to obtain a Boston Public Library Card. You will need this card before our class visit on February 3rd.

2. You will also need to obtain a photo ID card from Widner Library at Harvard to allow you to use the Houghton or any of the other special collections. The office is the first door to the left after you enter Widner Library, just before you go through security.

3. Course assignments and documents will be available on the class website. http://www.northeastern.edu/openingthearchive/

4. Because we will be spending a good deal of our designated class time in on-site visits and classroom presentations, some of your required course participation will be conducted in blog postings. The links to the blog can also be found on the website. Or go directly to: https://openingthearchive.wordpress.com/

5. Your participation in class discussions, workshops, and on-site visits is assumed and factored into the grading of the assignments

Grading

Archival Exercise #1 30%Archival Exercise #2 30%Research Grant:Proposal + Project Description 40%

___________________ 100%

Boston’s Area Archives (a partial list)

American Antiquarian Society http://americanantiquarian.org

Boston Athenaeum http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/

Boston Public Library http://www.bpl.org/

Houghton Library, Harvard http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/collections/htc.html

Massachusetts Historical Society http://www.masshist.org/welcome/

Museum of Fine Arts http://www.mfa.org/

Northeastern Archives http://www.lib.neu.edu/archives/

Peabody Essex Museum http://pem.org/homepage/index.php

Required Texts

The following books are available at the NU Bookstore. All other readings will be available on the class website: http://www.northeastern.edu/openingthearchive/

Please use these editions for ease of reference:

William Shakespeare, Tempest. Ed. Werstein (Folger Library)Aimé Césaire, A Tempest (Theater Communications Group)Carol Steedman, Dust. (Longleaf Publishers)Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain (Princeton University Press)

Reading Schedule

January 13 Introduction—What is an archive?Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html

Writing From Literature and/as History

January 20 Shakespeare, The TempestShakespeare’s Sources: Pretext, Context, IntertextStrachey, Ovid, Virgil

January 27 Juno’s WrathShakespeare’s critics and their sources:Barbara Fuch’s, “Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest” Alden T. Vaughan, “Trinculo’s Indian: American Natives in Shakespeare’s England” Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky “Shakespeare and the VoyagersRevisited”

February 3 Boston Public Library visit:Meet at Dartmouth Street entrance at 3:15 pmFurther blog discussion of Shakespeare’s critics

Adaptations, Palimpsests, Erasures

February 10 Linus sidelined us

February 17 Dryden & Davenant, The Enchanted Island, cont’dGavin Foster, “Ignoring the Tempest: Pepys, Dryden and the Politics ofSpectating in 1667”Pepys, Diary, Excerpts touching on The Tempest

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Katharine Eisaman Maus, “Arcadia Lost: Politics and Revision in the Restoration Tempest” Joseph Roach, “The Enchanted Island: Vicarious Tourism in Restoration Adaptations of The Tempest”

February 24 Aimé Césaire, A TempestDiana Taylor, “Acts of Transfer,” From The Archive and the Repertoire”Workshop for BPL Exercise #1

March 3 Houghton, Harvard visit BPL, Exercise #1 Due

March 10 SPRING BREAK

Disciplining the Archon

March 17 Excerpt from Derrida, “Archive Fever”Craig Robertson, “The Archive, Disciplinarity, and Governing: Cultural Studies and the Writing of History”Carolyn Steedman, Dust

March 24 Julia Flanders, Director Digital Scholarship Group presentation.Digital archives reading TBDCarolyn Steedman, Dust, cont’dArchival Ephemera, Exercise #2 Due

Archives R Us

March 31 Massachusetts Historical Society VisitAnn Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain over Pizza (@ Woody’s)

April 7 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, cont’d

April 14 Final Presentations

April 21 Final Presentations

April 27 All work due

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