Project Details

Each group will select a single passage or small group of related passages from the manuscript of Walden that Thoreau revised over the course of two or more draft versions.

Together, your group will carry out four tasks with respect to your selected passage or passages:

  1. Produce a valid TEI file that transcribes the portions of the manuscript pages relevant to your selected passage(s).
    • The website TEI by Example provides a handy validation tool you can use to check the validity of your markup.
    • The Scholarly XML extension for VS Code provides real-time validation as you type.
    • oXygen XML Editor is the editor of choice for many researchers and others who write XML professionally. It’s widely used in the TEI community. Unlike the tools above, it costs money, but you can use it free for 30 days.
  2. Compose, in valid Markdown, a narrative of Thoreau’s revisions to the passage(s), using evidence and logic to support a hypothesis about the sequence of, motivation for, and effect of the changes on the published text of Walden.
  3. Publish your narrative to the Digital Humanities at Geneseo blog, incorporating valid IIIF image URLs both to illustrate key moments in the narrative and to highlight important evidentiary support for it.
  4. Report on your project to the class at our final meeting (May 14, 12:00–3:20 p.m.), explaining the reasoning and evidence behind your revision narrative and sharing details about obstacles and triumphs you encountered in the course of completing this assignment.

All group communications about your project must take place in your group’s Teams channel. You must collaborate on your blog post in the Google Colaboratory notebook that I’ve shared with your group.

TEI template file

Other files

  • The handwritten text that’s the source of the placeholder transcription you see in the template file.
  • A very basic TEI file to help orient you in navigating the template file for your assignment.
  • A data glossary that explains the meaning of TEI elements and attributes used in the template file.

How you’ll be evaluated

Final product (20 points)

As a group, did you …

  Not really A little bit Somewhat Pretty much Yes!
Select a passage or passages from Walden that shows evidence of change on at least two manuscript pages from two of Thoreau’s draft versions? □ □ □ □ □
Develop a hypothesis or hypotheses to explain why Thoreau might have made the revisions you chose to focus on, and support your hypothesis or hypotheses with good reasons and evidence from the text of Walden, in a blog post on the Digital Humanities at Geneseo website? □ □ □ □ □
Include in your blog post some discussion of challenges you faced in doing this work, and how you overcame them? □ □ □ □ □
Include, as appropriate, IIIF URIs in your blog post to show excerpts from the manuscript pages you studied, so that readers could see and understand the changes you discussed? □ □ □ □ □
Use Markdown properly in your blog post? □ □ □ □ □
Include all your names at the top of the blog post? □ □ □ □ □
Create a valid TEI file describing the manuscript portions relevant to your argument about Thoreau’s revisions, including appropriate and correct information in both teiHeader and multiple instances of sourceDoc? □ □ □ □ □
Offer the class a clear and complete explanation of the revisions you studied in an oral presentation, using slides? □ □ □ □ □

Your individual contribution (10 points)

Individually, did you …

  Not really A little bit Somewhat Pretty much Yes!
Play an active role in your group’s planning and actions to meet the requirements of the assignment? □ □ □ □ □
Take significant responsibility for one or more project tasks? □ □ □ □ □
Show yourself to be a reliable group partner by completing work on time and communicating with the group as appropriate? □ □ □ □ □