In consultation with Special Collections librarians, Kristen Poole, Professor in the department of English designed a semester-long project for her ENGL468 class that allowed students to acquire a new understanding of historical inquiry. Students used Special Collections materials to analyze early printed editions of the histories that Shakespeare used as source texts for his own plays. Special Collections librarians provided class sessions in which students analyzed rare books as a group. Each student conducted individual research using early-printed books from Special Collections. See the product of the students’ research in the class website!
Of the collaboration, Dr. Poole noted, “My students came into Special collections with one relationship to history and left with a different understanding. The experience of working with sixteenth-century texts gave them a new appreciation not just of that particular time period, but of the vagaries of constructing history in the first place.”
