This assignment asks students to collaborate over the course of a semester on the creation of an annotated class anthology. It empowers students as knowledge producers responsible for introducing and guiding others through the course readings. While the process ask students to practice traditional critical thinking and writing skills, the result can be a public resource shareable with other students and broader intellectual communities. Teachers can start again every semester or have later classes build on the work of previous students. Note: while this assignment suggests using a single WordPress site to house the anthology (more here on integrating Hypothesis with WP and other CMSs), there’s no reason all course texts need to be at a single site.   

Overview

You’ve likely studied literature through an anthology before, one with footnotes written by the professors who edited the volume. For this class, we’re going to create our own such anthology online in which you all will be the scholar-editors.

This is an ongoing assignment for the entire semester. I have uploaded all public realm content from the course reading to our class WordPress site. You will be responsible for annotating regularly as part of your final grade.

Schedule

Every week you are responsible for contributing three annotations to our anthology. These annotations can be completed as you read based on your thinking and research or after class based on our discussions. They must be completed by the time class meets on Friday.

How and What to Annotate

I want you to think about yourself as an expert guide for a general reader to the texts we have studied. You will become such an expert through your reading, research, and discussion of the texts.

Your annotations should be roughly 2-3 sentences. Here are some different approaches to annotation:

• define an archaic or otherwise complicated term

• explain an historical allusion

• note the presence and briefly describe the use of a literary device in the text (imagery. tone, metaphor, irony, pun, rhyme, etc.)

• offer some key historical or cultural context for a particular passage

• elucidate an important analyses based on specific textual evidence

• make an intertextual link to a scene or theme in another course text

Do not re-annotate a piece of text that a classmate has annotated. If you want to add to their annotation, use the reply feature.

Make use of images and links whenever appropriate in your annotations. Images help bring the text alive, and links help you to support your claims and your