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:
- Produce a valid TEI file that transcribes the portions of the manuscript pages relevant to your selected passage(s).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Working with TEI
Get the TEI template file
- Download or copy the template file for your TEI transcription from GitHub. (You can use the copy icon next to the word “Raw” to copy the file contents and paste them into VS Code.) The template file shows how one might encode Thoreau’s revisions to the first paragraph of “Conclusion” paragraph 5 in versions E and F of Walden.
- Keep this file in a place where you can consult it readily.
- One member of your group will make a copy of this file and give the copy a name appropriate to your project. This will be the file that your group edits collectively during class.
Consult these other files
- A data glossary that explains the meaning of TEI elements and attributes used in the template file.
- A web page produced by applying a transformation script to the TEI template file. Compare the TEI file to the web page to get a feel for how the TEI file encodes the information about the manuscript images and the text on the manuscript surfaces. The same script will be applied to your group’s TEI file (if valid) after you submit it, and your group will be able to reference the resulting web page in your final blog post.
Work together on one TEI file in real time
- Every team member should install Microsoft’s Live Share extension for VS Code. Follow the instructions to work together in class on your file in real time.
- After each editing session, the member of your group who is the keeper of the file should add the date and time to the file name and upload it to your group’s project folder in Drive. This will preserve a backup of each editing session. Be religious about making backups.
Validate your TEI file
- The Scholarly XML extension for VS Code provides real-time validation as you type.
- The website TEI by Example provides a handy validation tool you can use to check the validity of your markup.
How your work on the project will 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? | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | –> |