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Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

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1️⃣ Sentence Synopsis

This book explores the underlying fears—about oneself, and about others—that keep artists of all types from producing their best work (or, indeed, any work at all).

🖼️ Contexts

I picked this book up at Black Cat Books in Corpus Christi on a family road trip earlier this year. Since I don’t technically need any more books, I usually enter independent shops with the belief that the exact right book will find its way into my hands and it’s my “duty” to support the bookstore by buying it. I picked up and put this book down three times. Then, with my kids pulling on my sleeves to leave the shop, I finally bought it. It’s quite abstract in its tone, peppered with blunt wisdom about the travails of making art, but does offer an incisive discussion on the core fears in any creative expression.

🔑 Key Takeaways

  • Becoming an artist requires self-acceptance (and this is what makes art personal), and in following your voice, you create a style (this is what makes your art distinct).
  • “Artist” – a person who creates as a means of self-expression alone rather than creating “useful” objects that are also beautiful – is a relatively new concept in the world.
  • Fears about artmaking fall into two categories: fears about yourself (which prevent you from doing your best work), and fears about your reception by others (which prevent you from doing your own work).
  • The real underlying fear is annihilation. Like Scheherazade, there is a need to make art as a means of staving off non-existence.
  • Ideas can be reused for “a thousand variations” – one of the best secrets of artmaking is iteration which can supply “the framework for a whole body of work” rather than just a single piece of it.
  • Stick to routines that work for you. If you find yourself stuck, it may mean you unnecessarily altered some part of your process that was already working well.

💯 Strong Lines

  • On vision vs. reality: “Often the work we have not done seems more real in our minds than the pieces we have completed. And so questions arise: how does art get done? Why, often, does it not get done? And what is the nature of the difficulties that stop so many who start?”
  • On the dangers of making art: “Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be.”
  • On the constraints of time and place: “The art you can experience may have originated 1000 miles away, or 1000 years ago, but the art you can make is irrevocably bound to the times and places of your life.”
  • On routines: “A piece of art is the surface expression of a life lived within productive patterns.”
  • On the ingredients for generative energy: “In healthy times you’ve only paused to distinguish between internal drive, sense of craft, the pressure of a deadline or the charm of a new idea – they all serve as sources of energy in the pieces you make.”
  • On the difference between art and craft: “The accomplishments of Antonio Stradivari and his fellow craftsman points up one real difference between art and craft: with craft, perfection is possible. In that sense, the Western definition of craft closely matches the eastern definition of art. In eastern cultures, art that faithfully carries forward the tradition of an elder master is honored; in the west it is put down as derivative.”
  • On the great work of your life: “Your growth as the artist is a growth toward fully realizable works – works that become real in full illumination of all that you know. Including all you know about yourself.”
  • On the continuous line of human expression: “The message across time from the painted bison and the carved ivory seal speaks not of the differences between the makers of art and ourselves, but the similarities. Today the similarities lay hidden beneath urban complexity – audience, critics, economics, trivia – in a self-conscious world. Only in those moments when we are truly working on our own work do we recover the fundamental connection we share with all makers of art.”

🧠 Brain Tickles

  • How artists embolden one another across space and time: “what we really gain from artmaking of others is courage-by-association.” And:
  • The duty of the art teacher is to model an artistic life; not only to instruct on content but to give a glimpse of how an artful life is lived.
  • Avoidance of the word “Creativity” (which does not appear in the book at all).
  • This quote, by Pablo Picasso: “Computers are useless – all they can give you are answers.”

🍎 Ideas & Excerpts for Teaching and Learning

Bayles and Orland caution against the pitfalls of balancing a life of teaching with a life of art, writing that it is, “hard to imagine placing a full-time teaching career a top a full-time art making career without something going awry in the process….The danger is real (and the examples many) that an artist who teaches will eventually dwindle away to something much less: a teacher who formerly made art.”

There is one beautiful passage in this book that I believe relates to learning as much as it does to art:

Artistically and otherwise, the world will come into has already been observed and defined by others – thoroughly, redundantly, comprehensively, and usually quite appropriately. Human race has spent several millennia developing a huge and robust set of observations about the world, informed as varied as language, art and religion. Those observations and turn it with stood many – enormously many –tests. We stand heir to and unstatably large set of meanings. Most of what we inherit is so clearly correct it goes unseen. It fits the world seamlessly. It is the world. But despite its richness and variability, the well defined world we inherit doesn’t quite fit each one of us, individually. Most of us spend most of our time in other people’s worlds – working at predetermined jobs, relaxing to pre-packaged entertainment – and no matter how benign this ready-made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn’t quite ring true. And so you make your place in the world by making part of it – by contributing some new part to the set.

A Mexican-American Lit Shelf: Curated by Students

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Reading along the Rio Grande/Río Bravo. Dall-E 2 Prompt.

Over the years, I have often been approached by colleagues in the many English departments I have worked, who ask variations of the following questions: “do you have any recommendations for Hispanic authors I can use?” or “What do you teach that’s ‘multi-cultural’? Any Latina authors in particular? What do you assign?”

I bristle a little at these questions which recall Roxane Gay’s famous blog post from a decade ago: “We are Many. We are Everywhere.” But in any case all those questions prompted me to share some recommendations—not mine, but those of my students.

At the end of every semester, I invite them to recommend authors and texts that I may have missed or couldn’t include as part of our course (an inevitability in ANY literature class!) For my own sake and theirs, I think it’s essential to keep texts fresh, diverse, and engaging so that we can all enjoy exploring new voices and perspectives.

Co-designing and optimizing curriculum with students in this way vests them deeper in the learning journey, ending the course as a community of discerning readers within the genre, and as thought-partners with the instructor.

And I must say that their generous responses have always improved my instruction. But more than this, they make me smile—sometimes because I meet old author-friends again, and sometimes because I’m surprised to find voices I’ve never heard of before.

So, here is this semester’s list—carefully curated by my students—of the top Mexican-American literature recommendations accompanied by their words about the content, authors, and why they’re worth considering for your next read.

Recommended Texts

Albuquerque by Rudolfo Anaya

I would simply continue to encourage the works of Rudolfo Anaya. After Bless Me, Ultima came two more novels and a series of story collections. But Anaya’s next breakthrough came with the 1992 publication of Albuquerque, set in the city Anaya has called home since 1952.

The Autobiography of Brown Buffalo by Oscar Zeta Acosta

Acosta was born in El Paso, Texas in 1935. He was an attorney, an activist within the Chicano Movement, a politician, and an author. His book The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, is obviously an autobiography but with a magical realism twist. It is his coming of age story in the 60s. He is not the most likable person, in my opinion, but the book does cover cultural and personal identity. Also, something interesting about him is that he disappeared and no one really knows what happened to him. According to his son, the last thing he was told by Acosta was that he was “about to board a boat full of white snow.” He is said to be the inspiration for “Dr. Gonzo” from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice by Mario T. García and Sal Castro

García is a professor of Chicano studies in UCLA. Before teaching, he received his BA and Master’s from UT at El Paso. He has written serval other books like The Chicano Generation and Testimonies of the Movement and Desert Immigrants. Castro was a military veteran, had a career in teaching from elementary to high school, and was a Chicano activist. This book gives us a biography of Castro’s life and what inspired the blowouts, and how those moments unfolded.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Kimmerer talks about Indigenous customs and childhood along with the teaching of plants and Indigenous legends behind some plants, such as how strawberries were formed from the heart of Skywoman’s deceased daughter after being buried in the earth. Though not Mexican-American, Kimmerer is a scientist, professor, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation whose unique POV is helpful in understanding the Indigenous worldview that is also featured in Mexican-American (and Latin American) literature. She gets you to learn science from her mythical writing and also incorporates history and truly captures the essence of Indigenous livelihood. I love that even though she’s a woman of science she still claims her roots and acknowledges the significance of ancient indigenous people’s ways of identifying with life and the earth as well. She ties the worlds together beautifully and well brings people into the world of her mind which consists of the vast knowledge of both realms. The book follows her growing up with her tribe and learning from her family about plants and such things while also blending in stories of her ancestors, all to further the reader’s knowledge of plants and indigenous tales. I’ll link the preview of the book from Google so you can read the first 73 pages that are offered. It’s super cute and so peaceful to read I hope some of you try it and it would be a beautiful addition to the curriculum.

Chato’s Kitchen by Gary Soto

Soto is a Mexican-American author from Fresno, California. He was a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Award and the National Book Award. As well as a recipient of Discovery-The Nation Prize and the California Library Association’s John and Patricia Award x2. I remember reading his books since I was a little kid, the most memorable to me being “Chato’s Kitchen”. He writes for both adults and children, although his main focus is on children’s books. Here is his website.

Citizen Illegal by José Olivarez

Jose Olivarez is an author, poet, and educator from Calumet City, Illinois. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry Magazine among other publications. Olivarez’s book of poems, titled Citizen Illegal focuses significantly on immigration, borders, home, and movement, particularly in a Mexican and Mexican-American context. His work is powerful because of his use of anecdotes and commentary about the difficulty of everyday life for immigrants and their children. According to NayaClark.com: “The poems in Citizen Illegal are illustrations of the traumas that America places on citizens and non-citizens alike. The collection serves to illuminate the specific human experience of immigration from Mexico to the United States, and places a human face, often Olivarez’s own, to a discourse that frequently relies heavily on dehumanizing language”. If you would like to read Citizen Illegal, you can buy the book of poems here.

The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Díaz del Castillo was born in Spain in 1492 and was a soldier under conquistador Hernán Cortés that participated in the Battle of Tenochtitlan that was responsible for taking down the Aztec Empire in 1521, and killing its ruler Montezuma II. Díaz del Castillo is said to have married an Indigenous woman and had a son named Diego and two daughters. This book gives insight into the confrontation of Spanish conquistadors and Indigenous Mexicans that inform Mexican and Mexican-American literature.

Corridos (various) by Mexican and Mexican-American authors

Corridos are an important part of Mexican American tradition that provide unique experiences of historic events. Corridos tell the stories of tragedy, war, identity, rebellion and so much more. I feel like modern corridos focus on love but traditional folk corridos would be a unique form of Mexican American literature. They say songs are like poetry and just from the corridos I’ve heard I’m sure they have a unique structure when read like poetry. Here is a compilation by Remezcla of “10 Classic Corridos & Regional Mexican Anthems that Still Slap.”

The God who Sees by Karen Gonzalez

An immigrant story about leaving one’s homeland for safety, and it draws biblical connections to many of the people in the Bible that have also migrated and left their homeland (Abraham, Hagar, Joseph, Ruth). I think it would be a great addition to have a biblical perspective of immigration and how tough it is to accomplish from a physical and emotional standpoint.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

A wonderful story detailing a year in the life of a young Chicana girl as she is growing and questioning her identity. Sandra Cisneros is a well-known author that has made ground-breaking progress for Chicana writers in publishing and is known for her commentary on the life of a Chicana women in Chicago. Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 and received her education at Loyola University and the University of Iowa. She has previously been a teacher as well as a counselor. Her works revolve around issues of race, class, gender, and the struggle of belonging to multiple cultures.

“The Jacket” by Gary Soto

The jacket in the poem is a symbol of poverty and bad luck for Soto and shows how something as simple as an item of clothing can affect one’s self-esteem. Gary Soto was born in California and writes about his life using poetry and short stories. He was not encouraged to go to school and mostly worked as a farm worker alongside his siblings. Soto prefers to write poetry and found his love for it while he attended college in Fresno.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

Luiselli is a Mexican author who lives in the United States. Several of Luiselli’s books are based on real-world experiences. She was a volunteer interpreter for young Central American migrants seeking legal status in the United States. She has recently published a novel in 2019 titled Lost Children Archive where she writes about her work with asylum-seeking children from Latin America and relates to her earlier book, an extended essay on child refugees, titled “Tell me How it Ends.”

I am Not your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez

This is a novel about a teenager coming to terms with losing her sister and finding herself amid the pressures, expectations, and stereotypes of growing up in a Mexican American home.  Fun fact this novel will also soon become a Netflix film that will be directed by America Ferrera!

Still Water Saints by Alex Espinoza

Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico but grew up in the United States. Alex mostly focused his writing on the community and identity of Latinos. Alex’s novels are widely acclaimed due to their distinct characters and portrayal of the Latino community. “Still Water Saints” talks about different characters living in a fictional California town called Agua Mansa. The novel explores the changing community, such as the struggles and achievements of families and individuals. Alex also explores the identities of the residents living in Agua Mansa and the constant change they experience. You can find more of his work here.

Additional Authors to Check Out

  • Oscar Cásares He is a Mexican-American writer (now a professor at UT Austin) who grew up in Brownsville. His writing focuses on the border and experiencing being torn with your identity.
  • Vianney Harelly She is a Mexican-American author that speaks about how Latinos can start healing their inner child. She speaks about women’s lineages and rebuilding those bonds.
  • Valeria Luiselli She was born in Mexico in 1983 and moved to the United States at the age of 2. She is the winner of several awards including the National Books Foundation “5 under 35” award and in 2019, she won the MacArthur “Genius Grant”. She is relatively young which I think makes her even more relevant and able to speak to a younger generation especially during this time where there is so much political and social unreset surrounding immagrants and women’s rights. She started a literacy program for girls in detention centers in New York, that focuses on creative writing and she is an advocate for asylum seeking children from Latin America. She also writes about mass incarceration the United States.
  • Juania Rivas Vasquez I would love to nominate my friend Juania Rivas Vasquez; she is a Chicana poet from Mexico and cofounder of a literary magazine. You can find her work on her Instagram: vata_lorca and also in her literary magazine.

Authors to Read more From

  • Jimmy Santiago Baca Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in 1952 and abandoned by his parents right away. His grandmother put him in an orphanage, but at 13 years old, Baca ran away from there and ended up being convicted for drug charges in 1973 and spent five years in jail. That’s where he taught himself to read and write! So hey, it looks like “Coming into Language” is semi-autobiographical after all (his whole autobiography is A Place to Stand). The point is, Baca’s story is a miracle: he was at the darkest point of his life and words became his only lifeline. He also wrote “Immigrants in Our Own Land,” which we read in this class and that’s part of a bigger selection of poems you can find here.
  • Sandra Cisneros I think I’m used to school sort of showing us the “light” (for lack of better word) side of history, etc. but I was surprised we were covering such real topics in class. I really appreciate the transparency during this class. It was so refreshing to tackle problems in our culture rather than sugar coat or simply ignore them. Because of this I would love to nominate Sandra Cisneros. Sandra Cisneros is an American writer most known for “The House on Mango Street” and “Woman Hollering Creek” She also helped organize a group called The Latino MacArthur Fellows, who work together to help their communities. Audio of “Woman Hollering Creek”: https://youtu.be/bgdk_vBuzaQ
  • Reyna Grande Reyna Grande is a Mexican-American author and an award-winning author, motivational speaker, and writing teacher. As a young girl, she crossed the US–Mexico border to join her family in Los Angeles, a harrowing journey chronicled in The Distance Between Us, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her other books include the novels A Ballad of Love and Glory, Across a Hundred Mountains, and Dancing with Butterflies, the memoirs The Distance Between Us: Young Readers Edition, and A Dream Called Home, and the anthology Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings. She lives in Woodland, California, with her husband and two children
  • Daniel Peña With my excitement over Bang, I can only ask that this book stay as part of the coursework, and I hope others will be encouraged to learn more about the author Daniel Peña as I have. Daniel is an award-winning writer and assistant professor, he was based out of UNAM in Mexico City, graduated from Cornell University and a guest professor in Leipzig, Germany.

🇲🇽 Happy future reading! 🇺🇸

No Zombie Projects: 3 Takeaways from Building a Second Brain’s Online Course

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I enrolled in Cohort 14 of Building a Second Brain in March of this year and thought I’d share some insights from that course to complement my notes from Tiago Forte’s recent book of the same title. Here are three that are still rattling around in my head all these months later that I didn’t find in the book:

1. No Zombie Projects

It’s easy to pile up a list of 10-15 ongoing projects in a master list and watch many of them atrophy from neglect as the months go by. My ideal self lives in my projects — the articles I haven’t written, books I haven’t read, presentations I have yet to give, courses I have yet to take, habits I want to adopt or break, creativity that wants to find expression in the tiny cracks of daylight between the “actual” (re: paying) work that consumes most workdays. Every project is “a hypothesis” that requires testing, in Tiago’s words, and so he advises that it is better for any endeavor to “fail fast” than to continue on in a project-list purgatory forever.

2. Your Attention is your Most Valuable Currency

The course begins with a module on “the perspective age” with the argument that one’s perspective – the way we experience the world, our education, desires, skills and interests—are uniquely ours and that it is the expression of this perspective that adds the most value to what we do creatively. There are a lot of implications that follow from this argument but one that I found compelling was the importance of paying attention to what I am paying attention to. In other words, making sure my information diet is rich with diverse perspectives and depth, and that I have some way of retrieving these – as well as the connected ideas they spark within me – when I need. In the Distill session, he remarked: “If you can just know what you know” you’ll be lightyears ahead in terms of navigating the endless space of the digital information universe.

3. Creative Decisions Really are Agonizing 

In Week 4, Tiago showed this simple graphic of the creative process: 

Forte, T. (2022, May 03). Week 4: Express [Powerpoint slides]. Building a Second Brain, Forte Labs.

“Divergent” stages of thinking – when we pin, like, and save all manner of digital ephemera – has to eventually come to a “convergent stage” of eliminating many of these ideas, even our most beloved (“decision” contains the Latin root –cide meaning “act of killing”). At some point, not all the ideas can progress forward, only the select few – the ones that most align to the purpose of the project. You will inevitably axe material you deeply love – that metaphor, example, chart, or image – but those can be worked into other projects, other spaces. This wasn’t revelatory information but has proved helpful in nudging me along from divergent states (which are always so fun!) to convergent states of thinking and creating that are more challenging. 

The Visual Syllabus (and other Variations)

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A portion of my visual syllabus from 2020.

Author’s Note: the following post was originally published on Catch the Next’s “Innovative Instruction Blog” in August 2017.

One day, I sat across from a colleague sipping coffee who was complaining about fellow teachers who “talk over” the heads of their students; those who aim at graduate level discourse even as they stand before a class of freshman comp. She looked me in the face and smiled, “I mean, come on. It’s the first rule of communication: know your audience.” I laughed. I thought of her a few weeks ago, as I revisited my course syllabi, flipping through and sighing at the expanses of  terra incognita  (so much of it cut and paste and not even read by me) that confronted me amongst those 16 pages.

I don’t remember much of the syllabi I received in community college nearly 20 years ago; suffice to say, I did receive them and their length certainly wasn’t something of note. When I transferred to college in the UK, I was instead handed a small booklet for each course– the size of a slim hymnal – though the increased length was only to accommodate the substantial reading lists (all available at the college library). Today, my students must contend with the reality of $300 textbooks, codes for online labs, and—perhaps most striking of all—the syllabi we hand to them on the first day of class, as a hearty welcome to the world of academic bureaucracy. Try as I might – an icebreaker, a writing prompt, and some well-placed jokes—the albatross of the syllabus must be dealt with. A 45-minute infosession abyss for a document that will be crumpled at the bottom of a backpack at the end. How many times has a student asked you something plainly stated in the syllabus?

Rebecca Schuman for Slate regards “Syllabus bloat” as “a textual artifact of the decline and fall of American higher education” replete with “transparent ass-covering and bad intentions.” She argues that it is a primary example of college corporatization and the administrative desire to mirco-manage faculty to serve the needs of a “customer” student who increasingly expects this transactional approach. Indeed, I was advised to “put everything in writing” and “think like a lawyer” as I embarked on my teaching career and this very specific task of syllabus writing nearly ten years ago. The common refutation is not to make up policies “on the fly” as they can lead to trouble down the line. It is good advice but also a false dilemma. There is a middle ground to be found here, surely.

I loved the zine-like books in Scotland, and so for years created booklets for my students in the same vein. A pretty picture, an inspirational quote, a selection of the best fonts and color coded by prep. Watching students flip through them throughout the semester was gratifying though I knew deep down that it was a clever diversion that sidestepped the bigger issue: the content itself should be compelling. Looking at other approaches, I found many teachers struggling with just this issue because we all know, at the end of the day, students just aren’t reading them.

I think the seed of my syllabus overhaul was planted when I picked up a copy of Lynda Barry’s Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor  at the San Francisco Airport. It was whimsical, silly, poignant and breathtaking (her work so often is). Then, when  Tona Hangen’s “Extreme Makeover” of her U.S. History syllabus made the viral rounds, I was reminded of how impactful visuals can be in conveying meaning for a generation reared on smartphones and iPads. After all, I want them to really know what they’re getting into on the first day and for this, I needed to better consider my audience. 

Truth be told: it’s tough to battle the bloat. It will always exist somewhere and is hard to delete  entirely (you can see how I handled this below). If you’re keen to be a little more subversive about it, consider Adam Hidebrink-Bruno’s syllabus manifesto which addresses students directly using the language of critical pedagogy and demystifying—forever—what a syllabus is really meant to do. You could also mark all that fine print in a section called “boilerplate” or “tl;dr” as Schuman suggests (and she notes wryly that this is likely to go unnoticed by administrators). Or you might take Mike Wesch’s “Big Ideas” approach that “talks to the text” in an honest and compelling way.

All of these methods inspired and informed my work, and so I set about to create this.  

I was challenged to be succinct and clear about my assignments, expectations and instructional approach – I had little room to spare. I used Hangen’s ocean metaphor to lead a discussion of what college is really about and how students are also responsible for what they take away from a course at the end. Of course, a departmental syllabus (with all that fine print) is still required so I put in on Blackboard in a prominent location and show them how to access it if they need to. I emphasize that none of the information is contradictory between the two documents but that the visual syllabus is the “highlight reel”.

The reception was positive and, more importantly, I have clarified what I feel is important about the work I do. I have also signaled the journey of mutual learning I’d like to take with my students over the next four months. Moments of reflection are hard to come by as we put out fires in the first week; taking the opportunity to turn a mundane task of cut and paste into a moment of empowerment was a good way to start the year.

Re-Imagining College Courses for the 21st Century: A Case Study in Open Pedagogy

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Author’s Note: this was originally published on my previous site, in December of 2020. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I cannot tell you how invaluable this textbook proved to be with the onset of the pandemic and remote teaching. I think the gaps in digital equity that became apparent and the desire students have to access learning everywhere and at all times make these types of projects all the more relevant and necessary.

CLICK HERE to access the anthology I discuss below.

It’s been a long journey. I’m proud to say that I’ve finished a two-year-long odyssey into open pedagogy that has culminated with the digital publication of a textbook I co-created with my students.

I have looked forward to writing this blog post for quite some time and I hope those who want to embark on similar projects will find it useful.

Background

Back in the summer of 2017, I was a new, first-time mother and was cursing myself for having signed up for a week-long professional development series in the blissful ignorance of pregnancy half a year before.  I dragged myself to the campus, coffee in hand, to learn about “sustainable assignments”—a topic that had intrigued me as an alternative to the draft-revise-dispose cycles of freshman comp. The keynote on the first day was Robin deRosa who introduced a number of open pedagogical assignments and activities (many of which I have since implemented across my courses, including my writing courses).

But there was one rather ambitious project she spoke about: the authoring of a student-created anthology of Early American Literature. Many of my colleagues scoffed at this approach, claiming that it would be almost impossible to do this at the community college level, presumably because of how many students we have in a given semester and the amount of individualized instruction this would require. But the idea stayed with me.

A year later, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board issued a call for proposals, soliciting faculty willing to adopt OER in their lower-division courses. As it turns out, there was only one area in English that had a decided dearth of OER: British Literature, specifically early British literature. It’s not hard to see why: Old English and medieval texts can be inscrutable (Piers Plowman, anyone?) and feel so removed from the everyday experiences of our students that we struggle to make the case for their relevance. On the other hand, all of the texts were clearly way out of copyright.  I knew these two factors presented the opportunity to create a similar project to deRosa’s, harnessing the power of open pedagogy to engage students and, at the same time, create a living textbook other instructors could turn to as a genuine alternative to costly anthologies. I submitted my application. It was accepted. And the work began.

Existing OER for Early British Lit

The first stage was to get the lay of the land. At the time I began my work, Wendy Howard Grey’s English Literature I, published by Lumen, was the only OER anthology of British literature I could find. It is an excellent resource but, in my case, I couldn’t use Lumen materials because of a conflicting grant at my institution. I also wanted to expand its offerings, particularly in the Old English, Anglo-Norman and early medieval periods. About four months after I began work on my grant,  Bonnie J. Robinson and Laura Getty’s British Literature I was published. It has many more readings and extensive introductions but didn’t have footnotes (something I knew I could address through Hypothes.is).

With this in mind, I rewrote my British Literature I curriculum to ensure my students would help me close the gaps by writing original introductions, discussion questions, and linking to the resources they thought would be most useful to fellow students. I also knew that we could create footnotes as a class and have “discussions” virtually by responding, clarifying, defining, and linking multimedia in text. This would help them understand the material better and could inform any future readers as well. This was the plan. Here is how I brought it all together:

Step 1: Defining Texts

I cracked open the Norton Anthology of English Literature and set about plugging what I thought were the most interesting and useful texts from the table of contents into a massive spreadsheet. Later, I would add texts from the Broadview Anthology that helped “round out” the offerings (as they feature works that relate to British literature even if they are not specifically written in English). I took the better part of two weeks to locate open-source versions of these texts. I went through this process two more times, locating additional texts and giving up on those I couldn’t find:

Master Spreadsheet with OER texts for Early British Literature.

One particular issue: translations. Though the texts themselves are out of copyright, often their modern translations were copyright-protected; this was especially true of lesser-known works, for example, those by women who had been “rediscovered” in the past century or so. Many times I had to abandon a particularly beautiful piece because I couldn’t find an open-source translation into modern English from Old English, Latin or French.

Step 2: Selecting a Platform

I was impressed with the design of deRosa’s anthology and I knew a bit of WordPress beforehand, so I decided to use the same platform she had: Pressbooks. Though there is a bit of a learning curve, I found it to be a versatile space that could accommodate multimedia, visuals and had features of standard textbooks. Once I had chosen this, I plugged in the texts I had found, using the same sections as in the Norton Anthology (by historical era).

The sections of this Anthology mirror Norton’s table of contents.

Step 3: Crafting Sustainable Assignments & “Open” Teaching

The next part, and by far the hardest, was figuring out how to write open assignments wherein everything could potentially be used in the book. You can see the results here.

I had an assignment where students wrote the introductions (as deRosa had) but also had them write question banks for tests, create digital learning objects, post annotations (using hypothes.is) and submit their formal essay assignments as samples. This is a photo of my first class of students whose good humor and encouragement got the project off the ground:

Step 4: Editing and Publishing

By far the hardest part was to take all of this material and sort, revise, and edit for publication. I worked hard to retain those original and interesting student insights while refining the rough edges of their contributions. My teaching really came alive in the mentorship of these students, these writers, and they created work that impressed and amazed me every semester for four semesters in a row.

And…thanks!

I am so indebted to Robin deRosa, the ACC Professional development team, and to the many inspiring individuals who help build the Creative Commons and from whom I have learned so much. If you are reading this and wondering whether to try some of it out, go for it. Open pedagogy made me unlearn some of the outdated teaching habits I had adopted over the years and gave me a renewed sense of purpose in my practice.