Reed Magazine February
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2003

David Howenstine ’03, English

In place of turning in traditional papers on the subject, David Howenstine used the World Wide Web to discuss sentimental abolitionist literature and the general conditions of slavery in early America with his peers. As a junior English major, Howenstine and his classmates in Lois Leveen’s English 341 class, “American Race, Sentiment, and Suffering,” were expected to design personal home pages—sites where they could post weekly journal entries on assigned texts and carry on more casual conversations about them.

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At the beginning of the semester, students had several tutorials on how to use Dreamweaver software and learned the basics of website construction from Reed’s computing staff; after this initial instruction, they would walk each other through new techniques on an overhead projector in the classroom. The goal of posting journal entries on personal home pages was to help highlight the connections between previous texts and a current novel or poem; by allowing individuals to hyperlink from one journal entry to another, each entry became more than just an isolated discussion. This web format allowed students to include images in their writing, ranging from artwork to cultural artifacts to photographs of authors, and to read and incorporate (via link) the ideas of classmates into their own expositions. Finding himself a fan of this online forum, Howenstine observes that “in general, web-based learning pushes students away from traditional English ways of looking at books and introduces a much more historical and interwoven approach to thinking about the various texts.”

For a final project, students split off into groups and designed homepages dealing with one specific author and text. Howenstine’s group chose Harriet Wilson and her book Our Nig. Their vision for the site required them to introduce the author and text, place everything in a literary context, write close readings of the text, discuss cultural artifacts in relation to the text, include secondary and primary sources, and provide other helpful links for the audience. This website was a much more comprehensive project than the personal home pages had been, as everyone had become adept at incorporating sophisticated features into the design. Moreover, it grew to be a significant Harriet Wilson resource and will undoubtedly take on an interactive life of its own in the larger world of the web. End of Article

Robin Tovey ’97 is a freelance writer in Portland.

Reed Magazine February
Go to Page 1 go to page two go to page three go to page 4 go to page 5 Page 6, you are hereLink to Reed Mag  Home
2003