Archive Usage

The use of online archives can be immensely helpful and would be a wonderful necessity for a literary webquest assignment that I have devised for a fictional course. The course itself would cover the roots between the Transcendentalists to the Beat Poets, and the particular assignment would focus on students discovering what classifies a Beat Poet, what distinguished their writing, and how the hype surrounding them concerned much more than actual literature.

In order to accomplish this, I have created a webquest page with links to a multitude of archives that give a wide range of information. Some are more traditional literary archives such as Poets.Org and the Modern American Poetry site http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/ that allow students to read a variety of work, some of which are more obscure and less likely to be anthologized. Other sites give more insight into their bios, news stories that were printed concerning their lifestyles and works www.rooknet.com/beatpage, artwork from both the Beats themselves and art that was inspired by them http://www.beatmuseum.org/, and an insight into their religion of choice, Buddhism www.litkicks.com/Topics/Buddhism.html.

The hope is that by the end of this assignment, the students would have a much clearer understanding of what the Beats writings and lifestyle consisted of as well as the effects they had not only on the literary world but on the art, music, and cultural scenes as well.

If you would like to view this, here is a link.