American Authors Archive

Summary
The America Authors Archive was conceived by professor Wyn Kelley as a learning resource for American Literature classes at MIT, such as “Studies in Fiction: Melville & Morrison" and "American Women Writers." Professor Kelley saw the collaboration with MetaMedia as an opportunity to address the role of digital media in the literature classrooms. In her course description, students are advised to “be prepared to read deeply (i.e. a small number of texts with considerable care), to draw on a variety of sources in different media, and to employ them in creative research, writing, and multimedia projects.” As such, the American Authors Archive is intended to enhance, but in no way substitute, the core experiences of reading literature, writing critical essays, and communicating literary ideas with pleasure and skill.

Objective
• Helping students advance toward MetaMedia’s goal of “media literacy”: that is, being able to read text in other media besides print—film, video, hypertext, or visual images in fine arts, photography, advertising, cartoons—and bring these media to bear on the analysis of a literary text.
• Engaging students’ often powerful responses to media to open up their readings of books, to make texts and histories come alive, and to make learning itself seem more effortless, natural, and creative than before.
• Using media’s power to focus attention to help students read, write, speak, and communicate with more care, in more detail, with greater concentration on previously unnoticed or neglected aspects of a work of art.

Project Directors
Wyn Kelley

Sponsor
d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education

Related Links
Melville Project: Midnight Forecastle