Open Pedagogy Project
In Spring 2025, one of my creative writing workshops will be focusing on expanding an anthology of lyric sequences written in English. Using texts that are in the public domain, we will curate a selection of sequences with accompanying paratextual materials and digital objects. The text will be licensed with Creative Commons.
Open Anthology
In preparation for the course, I used Pressbooks to create an anthology of poetic sequences published prior to 1929, all of which are in the public domain. The first half of the semester, we will be reading poems from this anthology. Instead of the typical reading responses or academic essays, however, students will work collaboratively to create anthology entries. These entries will include a critical introduction, a short bibliography, a multimedia element (if appropriate), and three questions for discussion. Click the button below to view the anthology-in-progress.
Collaborative Reading List
While I selected the texts that are in the public domain and added them to the anthology for the first half of the semester’s reading, I wanted to also allow students greater ownership over the texts we study. I also wanted to cover more contemporary poems that may be available online (thank you, Poetry Foundation!) but that were not in the public domain.
I decided to have students contribute to a collaborative document in which we could collectively create a resource of poetic sequences and long poems written in English from 1970 to the present. The class could then use this shared resource to choose the texts for the latter half of the semester.
This project not only helps us explore a wide range of contemporary poetry but also fosters collaborative learning, research, and decision-making as we build a syllabus together. My hope is that it will also serve as a resource for graduate students who choose to focus on the poetic sequence as a minor area on their preliminary exam.
You can click on the visualization below; if you click on the text, more information will appear. Data visualization created by Rebecca Dunham, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International—feel free to share and adapt with proper attribution.
Resources
Here I am including materials I used in the course, including a contract of agreement with students to have their work included in an open educational resource, as well as other assignments. All materials created by Rebecca Dunham, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International—feel free to share and adapt with proper attribution