Looking For Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman - Level 2

FAIN: HD-50866-09

CUNY Research Foundation, NYC College of Technology (Brooklyn, NY 11201-1909)
Matthew K. Gold (Project Director: April 2009 to January 2013)

The piloting of a series of courses at three institutions that would engage students in online investigations of Walt Whitman's work in geographical context that would conclude with a conference on material culture and Whitman.

This project engages faculty and students at four universities--New York City College of Technology (CUNY), New York University, University of Mary Washington, and Rutgers University-Camden--in a concurrent, connected, semester-long inquiry into the relationship of Whitman's poetry to local geography and history. Each class will explore the relationship between its specific locale and a particular phase of the poet's work. Utilizing open-source tools to connect college classes from multiple institutions, the interdisciplinary project breaks down traditional institutional walls as it creates a collaborative online space in which students can participate in a dynamic, social, web-based learning environment. In its conception and in its dissemination, this project expands the traditional bounds of classroom and institutional space. In doing so, it reflects the central themes of Whitman's career: democracy, diversity, openness, and connectedness.

Associated Products

Disrupting Institutional Barriers through Digital Humanities Pedagogy (Article)
Title: Disrupting Institutional Barriers through Digital Humanities Pedagogy
Author: Matthew K. Gold
Abstract: Whitman’s poetry formed the basis of a pedagogical experiment that tested new kinds of bridges across space and time. “Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman,” a project sponsored by two Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), brought together classes from four academic institutions in a collaborative digital environment that emphasized place-based learning and progressive educational techniques. The project set forth a new model for engaged learning that mirrored Whitman’s poetic ideals of democracy and diversity.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.diversityweb.org/DiversityDemocracy/vol15no2/gold.cfm
Primary URL Description: Web version of the article
Secondary URL: http://www.diversityweb.org/DiversityDemocracy/vol15no2/vol15no2.pdf
Secondary URL Description: Link to a PDF version of the journal
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Diversity & Democracy
Publisher: Association of American Colleges & Universities

Looking for Whitman: A Multi-Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy (Book Section)
Title: Looking for Whitman: A Multi-Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy
Author: Matthew K. Gold
Editor: Brett D. Hirsch
Abstract: Over a hundred and fifty years after the first appearance of Walt Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_, Whitman’s work inspired a series of pedagogical experiments that transposed his experimental teaching philosophy and his poetry into the era of networked learning through a project entitled “Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman.” Sponsored by two Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants from the United States National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the project brought together classes from four academic institutions in a collaborative digital environment that emphasized place-based learning and progressive educational techniques. The project set forth a new model for aggregated, collaborative and open learning practices that mirrored Whitman’s own poetic ideals and that has served as an important example of digital pedagogy for the digital humanities community. Like Whitman’s own checkered career as a teacher, however, the project’s successes and its failures point towards future developments along related lines. As I discuss the project and describe some of the ways in which others might extend its work, I hope to articulate some of the reasons why the digital humanities, as a field, would benefit from a more direct engagement with issues of teaching and learning than it has exhibited thus far.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/161
Primary URL Description: Publisher's page for the book
Secondary URL: http://www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/161
Secondary URL Description: Direct link to open-access text
Access Model: open access
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Book Title: Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics
ISBN: 978-1-909254-2

Looking for Whitman: A Grand, Aggregated Experiment (Book Section)
Title: Looking for Whitman: A Grand, Aggregated Experiment
Author: Gold, Matthew K.
Author: Groom, James
Editor: Gold, Matthew K.
Abstract: Conceived of as a multicampus experiment in digital pedagogy seeking to break through the institutional barriers that, even in the age of the Internet, so often divide one university classroom from another, “Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman” was sponsored by two Start-Up Grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Office of Digital Humanities.1 The project brought together five courses on Walt Whitman, each running concurrently at a college located in a place where Whitman himself had lived and worked, in an attempt to see how a group of distributed faculty and students could share, collaborate, research, and converse out in the open through a rich infrastructure of social media.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/5
Primary URL Description: Debates in the Digital Humanities (open-access version)
Access Model: Open Access
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Book Title: Debates in the Digital Humanities
ISBN: 0816677956

With Good Reason - "America the Beautiful" (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: With Good Reason - "America the Beautiful"
Writer: Scanlon, Mara
Writer: Earnhart, Brady
Director: McConnell, Sarah
Abstract: In 1862, Poet Walt Whitman went to Fredericksburg, Virginia, searching for his brother George who had been wounded in a Civil War battle. Mara Scanlon and Brady Earnhart (University of Mary Washington) say Whitman was so moved by the carnage he found that he worked as a nurse for the rest of the war.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://withgoodreasonradio.org/2015/06/america-the-beautiful-2/
Primary URL Description: Each week on With Good Reason, our ever-curious host Sarah McConnell takes you along as she examines a wide range of topics with leading scholars. With Good Reason is offered as both a half hour and hour show via Content Depot and PRX. It is produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Web

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