Fran Teague
Department of English
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
fteague@arches.uga.edu
In a course (spring 1999) introducing undergraduates to women writers before 1700, I decided to try out the Renaissance Women Online (RWO) Site that was available on the web. As it happened, the class was going to use a webpage in any case, since my university encourages us to make use of the Web-CT system. Students would have to use the class website to post short response papers, to review my notes, or to see the syllabus, so it would be relatively easy for them to access the RWO materials. I built the RWO site into two assignments, but did not require students to use it. I want to describe each assignment, tell you about their results, and then talk about what those results imply for RWO. (To look at the site, check http://courses.arches.uga.edu/public/ENGL3300FT/index.html.)
The first assignment was group reports presented early in the term so that students could get to know one another and so that they could help one another learn what resources were out there. I asked six groups to report to the class on different topics: three groups reported on individual writers (Margaret Cavendish, Amelia Lanyer, and Mary Ward) and three on topics about women's lives (clothing, weddings, and childbirth). The form of their presentations was left up to the students, who knew of the RWO site, but did not have to make use of it. The end results were fascinating, and while I would love to claim them as my idea, the groups worked pretty much on their own. The three groups focused on topics about women's lives gave us a high- school sex education lecture from the seventeenth century (very funny), a Renaissance fashion show (very elegant), and a wedding feast (very tasty). The groups focused on individual writers were even more original. Thus the group that presented their findings on Amelia Lanyer did so in a parody of the McLoughlin Report ("She was Shakespeare's dark lady." "WRONG, you tiny idiot.") The group reporting on Mary Ward offered us a visit (and blessing on our work) from her ghost. Finally the group reporting on Margaret Cavendish was sufficiently impressed by the available resources that they built a webpage on her life and works.
Those who had the topics about women's lives did not find the RWO helpful: they preferred to use websites that dealt with their particular area, like the Costumer's Manifesto for Renaissance clothing, rather than using the RWO contextual essays, which concentrate on literary issues. Nor did the Mary Ward group use the RWO, since it has none of Ward's texts up. But the Cavendish and Lanyer groups both used the RWO site, and the Cavendish group, which prepared a website, used it extensively.
Having the Cavendish/Lanyer students approach the unglossed texts in a group was surprisingly effective. They lent support to one another and helped themselves through the hard bits. They didn't have to provide close readings, but rather had simply to explain the significance of their writer to the rest of the class. That meant that they didn't freeze up for fear that they might say something incorrect. Indeed, I was surprised at how often the Cavendish group in particular had worked through difficult passages on their own. One reason may be that each of the writer groups became invested in their subject, and they wanted the class to understand how interesting their writer was. For independent work on an individual writer covered by the RWO, then, I'd give the website high marks. Students went in cold and managed both to navigate it without help and to imagine ways of incorporating it without prompting.
The second assignment was the final project. Instead of a final exam, I chose to give students a take home essay. (You'll find a copy of the assignment on one side of the handout, with selected--and uncorrected--comments from various students on the other side.) The class was asked to design some work that would introduce an audience of the future to early women writers, and by asking some leading questions I tried to prompt them to consider central scholarly and critical issues.
At this point I should explain that the University of Georgia's "Women and Literature" course is a topics class. Each instructor picks a different area on which to focus: women's autobiographies, Southern women writers, or early modern women in my case. It is a 300-level course, and only one of these can be counted toward an English major. That means that students from across campus sign up for the course because they need a credit for their women's studies certificate or because they want a humanities credit, but not necessarily because they have any interest in the course's focus. Thus the thirty-five undergraduates who had enrolled in my course had relatively little background in the subject to start with; most probably signed up thinking they'd be reading Alice Walker or Emily Dickinson or Jane Austen. Not everyone makes it through--I lost four that term--and it would be unfair to expect them all to find the subject to their taste.
The final project results suggest that, despite their lack of prior knowledge or interest, they decided that they deeply cared about these early women writers and felt strongly that the general public ought to know about them. I expected a fair number of them to produce a dull little plan for an anthology resembling the ones they had used and including only the writers studied in class. They were far more creative than that. Among the projects, forty-five per cent did propose books; twenty-five percent suggested videos or television productions; twenty percent wanted to produce websites or cd-roms, and ten percent described virtual reality worlds. The books were hardly traditional: they included a "Choose your own adventure" series for teenagers, a textbook and cd-rom (modeled on Encarta), a textbook with a cd that includes musical work by women and musical settings of their poetry.
But the class really had fun with the television productions, which they proposed to A&E, the Learning Channel, the History Channel, and even the Fox Network (Fed Up: When Women Writers Attack). They loved casting the roles: Kathy Bates or Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth, Gwyneth Paltrow as Mary Queen of Scots or the Countess of Pembroke, Lisa Kudrow as Anne Boleyn, Julia Ormond as Lady Mary Wroth, Kate Winslet as Bathsua Makin, Claire Danes as Lady Elizabeth Carey, Michelle Pfeiffer as Lady Mary Chudleigh, Clare Forlani as Margaret Cavendish, Meryl Streep as Mary Ward, and Natalie Portman as Katherine Philips. One student modeled her television series for SHE-TV (a network that she tells me will be prospering in the year 2027) on Quantum Leap. The heroine, with Virginia Woolf as a hologram guide, was popped into the body of a different historical person each week, becoming one of Metacomet's warriors capturing Mary Rowlandson, a maidservant eavesdropping on Queen Elizabeth, or Susannah Shakespeare visiting her father to see the premiere of The Taming of the Shrew.
The results were especially pleasing because, once again, I had relatively little input. I asked them to think about key issues we'd worked on during the term, but they didn't have to cover them. Their critical sophistication was cheering. They also showed some strong preferences in their proposals: they want lots of graphics, biographical information, footnotes instead of endnotes, electronic resources, and (to my great surprise) old-spelling rather than modernized spelling. About a third had used RWO to find new authors; some had consulted other sources as well. They suggested around thirty writers I had not had time to cover; half of these came directly from the RWO. They also wanted to include folk ballads, nursery rhymes and old wives' tales, and more diaries and letters.
What do these results suggest about the RWO? First the good news: my class chose to use RWO without my requiring it or nagging them. They had no trouble navigating the site, found lots of useful information there, and liked the old-spelling texts. But now for the suggestions: my class would have liked some more glossing. They passionately desire pictures and biographical information and want to see that side of the site expanded. I've included a selection of their comments on the handout, so you can see for yourselves what they think. What I think, however, is that there are exciting times ahead when these students graduate and get started on re-shaping our world.
The year is 2027. Next year you, as the world's leading authority on women writers before 1700, will publish a new anthology, Shakespeare's Sisters, to mark the centennial of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Your assignment is to write a 6-8 page prospectus for your anthology.
You go to the Brown University Women Writers Project website to see what's available. The site includes works published as recently as the 1800s, you notice, but there are lots of possibilities for women writing before 1700. And you know of other materials.
Now come the questions:
I really hope that you have fun designing the anthology! You'll find lots of information on the WWP site, so I encourage you to take an hour or so to explore it fully. Remember that what this assignment asks you is to tell me how you, after taking this course, might answer Virginia Woolf's question: who was Shakespeare's sister?
(presented without emendation of any kind)
Biographies: [T]he lives of these women are just as interesting as the work itself.
We want the readers to see how interesting each of these women's lives were.
A friend of mine . . . once commented that classes in women's studies, African-American studies, and so forth were generally twice as difficult as other classes, because the people responsible for the classes were desperate to prove that these were legitimate fields of study, and not just "bunny" classes for lazy or stupid women, blacks, etc. . . . Lest we be accused of being lax about literary value, and studying [early modern women] simply because they are women, we are leery of allowing that perhaps a little background information on their works would lead to a fuller understanding of those works. Instead, we insist that the work of women ought to be able to stand utterly on its own. . . . Even the most enthusiastic Wilde scholar must admit that De Profundis would probably not be circulating in paperback one hundred and thirty years after it was written if it were not for the sensational and tragic love story behind the work.
Old spelling: For the most part the text is still comprehendible in its original state . . . the reader is more focused on the text when it is in its original language.
I wish to keep as many works as possible in the original written form as an attempt to heighten the reader's literary experience.
My first reaction was to modernize all the spelling, but some people are convinced that modern spellings ruin the text. As a compromise, it has been decided that the texts will appear with their original spelling as the default setting. Those who feel that archaic spellings only get in one's way while reading the text will have the option to change it. By clicking on a toolbar at the top of the page, users will be able to change the spelling of archaic words to the modernized version.
Glossing: [Student observes that footnotes are "vastly preferable" to endnotes]
Readers familiar with pre-1700s vernacular may choose to ignore hypertext highlighted text without dealing with distracting footnotes and their corresponding numbers.
The most important question one faces when proposing such a task is the question of organization. Will it be in alphabetical order? Will it be chronologically organized? Will it be organized by genre? In a word, yes! This anthology will have something no other anthology, to my knowledge, has ever had before. It will contain a search engine. . . . [He also proposes pop-up window annotation.]
I will leave the texts in the old spelling with footnotes sparingly used . . . at the bottom of each page.
Graphics: Each section will be introduced with a full-page picture of the woman in question.
I, for one, am often curious about what a writer looks like after I have read his or her work.
I also included full-page color pictures and drawings of these gifted and courageous women. . . . Included are pictures/drawings of family members, places they lived, and significant artifacts like desks they used and original manuscripts.
Any available artwork should be printed at the beginning of each chapter to gove the reader an idea of what each person looked like as well as show what type of status each held.
The Ideal Vehicle: I have included six commercial trailers for the A&E special, Shakespeare's Sisters . . .
In one sense the web version will be better than the book version because there are no limitations. The web version will allow anyone to access specific information easily. However, the book version is essential because it is a concrete form of communication that can be burned, but can not be unplugged and is therefore more reliable. The book version is also unmonitored and not easily traced, so that if any anti-women's writers groups rise up this collection of works will be spread out and preserved until the movement passes and they can be brought out again.
[One proposes including "reality based holograms" of early women writers so that students can ask them questions and hear them read their work.]
As you know, I have received an offer from FOX asking me to write the scripts for a new television series, Fed Up: When Women Writers Attack. I have also considered creating a website about early women's literature. However, I have chosen to use Woolf's own medium, the written word, for the anthology.
[M]y first degree is in secondary education, and my passions lie with teenagers. Thus our project became what you see today: the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. . . .As the novel progresses, you are faced with choices, and each choice leads to a different path.
We decided to create a virtual community consisting of one man street that is divided into blocks. Each block will have [a] certain theme and will contain several houses. Every woman writer will have her own house and within that house the exploring student can find information on the writer's life and work.
Individual Figures
Projects & Organizations
Handy Collections of Info