Mackenzie Brooks, Stephen McCormick, and Sarah Schaffer (Washington and Lee University)

In this collaborative presentation, a French professor, a Digital Humanities librarian, and an undergraduate French minor from Washington and Lee University will speak about their experience combining two courses, an advanced French literature course with a one-credit Digital Humanities lab (DH Studio). In the literature course, students studied the medieval French Lais of Marie de France and their literary and historical context; in the DH Studio, students learned the basics of XML and the Text Encoding Initiative. The linked courses shared a final project: a public website serving as a scholarly resource on Marie de France featuring the students’ TEI-encoded texts, Le Rossignol and Chevrefeuille.

Stephen McCormick, Assistant Professor of French, will speak about how he was required to reimagine the traditional literary syllabus to allow for collaborative research between students and for development of the technical skills involved in marking up texts with TEI. Mackenzie Brooks, Assistant Professor and Digital Humanities Librarian, will speak on the pedagogical considerations required to introduce digital humanities and the Text Encoding Initiative to undergraduates. Sarah Schaffer, an undergraduate French minor, will share her experiences as part of the student-led research team. Mackenzie and Stephen will teach these courses again in winter 2016 and, to conclude this presentation, we will share the lessons learned from the previous course and ideas to modify and improve our pedagogical goals.