Teaching Transatlanticism Website

 

Barbara McCaskill Professor of English, University of Georgia

Linda K. Hughes Addie Levy Professor of Literature, Texas Christian University

Sarah Ruffing Robbins Lorraine Sherley Professor of Literature, Texas Christian University

Sofia Prado Huggins Ph.D. Candidate in Literature, Texas Christian University

March 26, 2021

In our latest Digi Colloquium, Dr. Barbara McCaskill hosted “DH, Public Humanities, and New Landscapes of Learning: Writing for the Teaching Transatlanticism Website,” in which Texas Christian University’s Teaching Transatlanticism team discussed their work on the Teaching Transatlanticism website, and graduate students from UGA and TCU showcased their research contributions for the site’s digital anthology.

In the first half of the colloquium presentation, the Teaching Transatlanticism team (led by Dr. Linda Hughes and Dr. Sarah Ruffing Robbins, and including Sofia Huggins, a Ph.D. Candidate in Literature at Texas Christian University) described their motivations in creating the Teaching Transatlanticism website.  Based on Dr. Hughes and Dr. Robbins’s textbook Teaching Transatlanticism: Resources for Teaching Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Print Culture and their current work on an anthology of transatlantic texts, the website is intended to be a fluid, collaborative resource.  Researchers are invited to contribute to the digital anthology by adding additional texts and ways of conceptualizing them, building a community that creates knowledge through social interaction.

In the second half of the colloquium, graduate students from Dr. Barbara McCaskill’s ENGL 6770 class and from Texas Christian University presented their own research contributions for the Teaching Transatlanticism Digital Anthology:

  • Ruth Myers and Chanara Andrews, Ph.D. students in English at UGA, described their work on a selection of sources written by and about Olaudah Equiano, and how these texts can show the narratives surrounding Equiano over time.
  • Ronika McClain, MFA candidate at UGA, and Catherine Maloney, MA student in English at UGA, are currently transcribing the college writings and early activism of Mary Church Terrell, with a particular focus on her poetry.
  • Abigayle Farrier, Ph.D. student in Literature at TCU, is digitally recovering The Carib, the first Antiguan literary journal. Her presentation for this colloquium focused on the challenges of transcribing and annotating “Scissors and Paste” by Frieda Cassin.
  • Alonzo Smith, Ph.D. student in English at TCU, discussed Frederick Douglass’s “Haiti and the United States. Inside History of the Negotiations for the Mole St. Nicolas” and the insights it offers into Douglass’s conflicting emotions toward his role as a diplomat in Haiti.

These presentations showcase how the Teaching Transatlanticism website provides a place for the collaborative efforts of researchers from a variety of backgrounds to contribute to the knowledge of transatlantic literature, which can then be carried forward into future classrooms.

Watch the full presentation.