Northeastern University, English

Department

Spring 2015
T 3:30-5:45
Holmes 400B
Professor Marina
Leslie
E-Mail: m.leslie@neu.edu
Office: 407 Holmes Hall
Office Hrs: Thursdays 11:301:00

Class Website:
http://www.northeastern.ed
u/openingthearchive/

Image: Holland House Library after an air raid (1940) Ref:

BB83/04456 English Heritage

ENGL 7351: Opening the Archive 2.0

Overview
This course showcases the rich archival holdings of print materials in the greater Boston area to
offer training in the materials, methods, and theories of primary source research. We will visit
three remarkable research institutions we have here in the Boston area: the Boston Public Library,
The Massachusetts Historical Society, and Harvards Houghton Library in order to become more
familiar with their unique collections and particular protocols. In class we will examine the
complex traffic between self-consciously literary texts and other artifacts drawn from print culture
along multiple trajectories: One will follow the uses and transformations of source material in
Shakespeares most contemporary play, The Tempest. A second will track important
reinventions and transformations of The Tempest to assess how adaptations negotiate their
complex literary legacies with (and/or against) the multivalent historical, political, and aesthetic
contexts of their own production. A third will seek to incorporate theories of the archive to
dramatize the range of working definitions and the methodological challenges that are invoked by
the theorists we are reading and to enable students to theorize their own research practices. Grades
will be based on two research-based exercises that we will workshop in class and a final research
grant proposal on a topic of your choice related to your own research agenda.

Goals

Grading

It is the aim of this class to enable you to

develop the following:
n

Familiarity with the collections and protocols

for research in several Boston area archives

Conversancy with some of theoretical

questions that inform archival research

A body of clear, thoughtful, original writing

that engages some of the practical and
theoretical concerns of archival research

A potential grant proposal to support a

research project, drawing on archival
resources in the area or beyond

Archival Exercise #1 30%

Archival Exercise #2 30%
Research Grant:
Proposal + Project
Description
40%
___________________
100%

Bostons Area Archives

(a partial list)

American Antiquarian Society

http://americanantiquarian.org

Requirements

Boston Athenaeum
http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/

1. Everyone in this class, who doesnt

already have one, will need to obtain a
Boston Public Library Card. You will need
this card before our class visit on February 3rd.

Boston Public Library

http://www.bpl.org/

2. You will also need to obtain a photo ID card

from Widner Library at Harvard to allow you to
use the Houghton or any of the other special
collections. The office is the first door to the
left after you enter Widner Library, just before
you go through security.
3. Course assignments and documents will be
available on the class website.
http://www.northeastern.edu/openingthearchiv
e/
4. Because we will be spending a good deal of
our designated class time in on-site visits and
classroom presentations, some of your
required course participation will be
conducted in blog postings. The links to the
blog can also be found on the website. Or go
directly to:
https://openingthearchive.wordpress.com/

Houghton Library, Harvard

http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houg
hton/collections/htc.html
Massachusetts Historical Society
http://www.masshist.org/welcome/
Museum of Fine Arts
http://www.mfa.org/
Northeastern Archives
http://www.lib.neu.edu/archives/
Peabody Essex Museum
http://pem.org/homepage/index.php

5. Your participation in class discussions,

workshops, and on-site visits is assumed and
factored into the grading of the assignments

ENGL7351 Opening the Archive --Leslie 2

Required Texts
The following books are available at the NU Bookstore. All other readings will be available on
the class website: http://www.northeastern.edu/openingthearchive/
Please use these editions for ease of reference:
William Shakespeare, Tempest. Ed. Werstein (Folger Library)
Aim Csaire, A Tempest (Theater Communications Group)
Carol Steedman, Dust. (Longleaf Publishers)
Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain (Princeton University Press)

Reading Schedule
January 13

IntroductionWhat is an archive?
Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel
http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html

Writing From Literature and/as History

January 20

Shakespeare, The Tempest

Shakespeares Sources: Pretext, Context, Intertext
Strachey, Ovid, Virgil

January 27

Junos Wrath
Shakespeares critics and their sources:
Barbara Fuchs, Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest
Alden T. Vaughan, Trinculos Indian: American Natives in
Shakespeares England
Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky Shakespeare and the Voyagers
Revisited

February 3

Boston Public Library visit:

Meet at Dartmouth Street entrance at 3:15 pm
Further blog discussion of Shakespeares critics

Adaptations, Palimpsests, Erasures

February 10

Linus sidelined us

February 17

Dryden & Davenant, The Enchanted Island, contd

Gavin Foster, Ignoring the Tempest: Pepys, Dryden and the Politics of
Spectating in 1667
Pepys, Diary, Excerpts touching on The Tempest
ENGL7351 Opening the Archive --Leslie 3

Katharine Eisaman Maus, Arcadia Lost: Politics and Revision in the

Restoration Tempest
Joseph Roach, The Enchanted Island: Vicarious Tourism in Restoration
Adaptations of The Tempest
February 24

Aim Csaire, A Tempest

Diana Taylor, Acts of Transfer, From The Archive and the Repertoire
Workshop for BPL Exercise #1

March 3

Houghton, Harvard visit

BPL, Exercise #1 Due

March 10

SPRING BREAK

Disciplining the Archon

March 17

Excerpt from Derrida, Archive Fever

Craig Robertson, The Archive, Disciplinarity, and Governing:
Cultural Studies and the Writing of History
Carolyn Steedman, Dust

March 24

Julia Flanders, Director Digital Scholarship Group presentation.

Digital archives reading TBD
Carolyn Steedman, Dust, contd
Archival Ephemera, Exercise #2 Due

Archives R Us
March 31

Massachusetts Historical Society Visit

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain over Pizza (@ Woodys)

April 7

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, contd

April 14

Final Presentations

April 21

Final Presentations

April 27

All work due

ENGL7351 Opening the Archive --Leslie