Principal Investigator Wyn Kelley
Co-investigator Belinda Yung
Project Website http://hyperstudio.mit.edu/projects/american-authors/
Conceived as a learning resource for American literature classes at MIT, the American Authors project presents students with documents related to 13 of America’s most famous authors. Featuring not texts but the supporting materials that put literature into social, political, and historical context, the archive presents a wealth of mulitmedia materials from Colonial times though the late 20th century. Materials available for the study of Herman Melville, for example, include film clips, shanty songs, scrimshaw images, and designs for whaling ships. Other authors represented in the archive include Frederick Douglass, Mary Rowlandson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edith Wharton, and Toni Morrison. Documents touch upon a variety of themes, from race to religion, and from sexuality to slavery. The goal of the archive is to enhance the core experiences of reading literature, writing critical essays, and communicating literary ideas with pleasure and skill.
Hyperstudio provided conceptual support and integration into the Metamedia platform.