Digital scholarly editing in the early modern curriculum

This article describes and analyses the experience of building a collaborative digital edition of an early modern play in the university classroom. Reflecting on all aspects of module development from conception through to execution and evaluation, the article articulates the challenges and opportunities of digital scholarly editing pedagogy and makes specific practical and conceptual recommendations for how our model might be replicated. 

Having received funding from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, the authors co-designed and co-delivered an innovative postgraduate module on the theory and practice of digital scholarly editing. Students in the module collaborated on a large-scale digital editing project. In the first part of the semester, they learned key theoretical and methodological approaches to scholarly editing and text encoding with TEI. As the semester progressed, they gained hands-on experience by working together to create a new digital edition of an early modern theatrical work: James Shirley’s The Royall Master (1638). 

This article focuses on the key pedagogical outcomes of the module and the students’ working process: independent and collaborative activities, and synthesis of perspectives from the fields of scholarly editing and early modern studies. Moreover, we argue that students on the module acquired a range of transferable skills that have impacts beyond academia: project management, text encoding, version control, digital image preparation, and web design and publishing. 

This article is timely as it capitalises on a recent swell in interest in the pedagogical possibilities of digital scholarly editing in the early modern studies curriculum. Besides a dedicated seminar on this topic hosted by the authors for the Curriculum and Canon webinar series at NUI Galway in 2021, two panels at the 2021 Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting addressed the topic of “Editing Early Modern Texts and/as Pedagogy.” Elsewhere, peer-reviewed journal articles have considered the value of teaching TEI in the literature classroom (Kaethler), of digital scholarly editing in undergraduate modules (Salt, et al.), and of editorial pedagogy for teaching Shakespearean drama (Taylor). 

This article advances scholarship in this area through its particular focus on the pragmatics of syllabus and assessment design (including a pandemic-age perspective on the incorporation of online learning and open educational resources). In addition, the authors draw attention to ways in which the theory and practice of digital scholarly editing can equip students with valuable skills and competencies for life beyond academia.