Digital Pedagogies: Building Learning Communities for Studying Victorian Periodicals

In 2006, Teresa Mangum edited a special issue of Victorian Periodicals Review on the theme “Periodicals, Pedagogy and Collaboration.” The result was a bumper edition divided into three parts emphasizing “distinctive approaches to periodical study.”¹ There were ten articles, an editorial introduction and conclusion, and a wealth of curricular information. The issue was a rallying cry for scholars to share good practices, reflect on issues facing future generations of scholars, and continue discussions started at annual RSVP conferences. Nine years later, this special issue extends discussions of pedagogy introduced in the 2006 special issue, with a particular focus on how the “digital turn” has impacted the way scholars teach and research Victorian periodicals. The theme of collaboration remains at the heart of this collection; it considers how advances in digitization have enabled scholars to build wider collaborative networks through the development of online learning communities where experiences can be shared and discussed.

This is not to suggest that the potential impact of digitization was overlooked in the 2006 special issue but rather to reflect on how far attitudes and perceptions have changed in such a comparatively short period of time. To maintain this reflective point of view, we commissioned a roundtable for this issue to consider how exactly changes in digitization have impacted scholars’ experiences teaching and researching Victorian periodicals. Summer 2015 marks ten years since Patrick Leary wrote his seminal article, “Googling the Victorians,” for the Journal of Victorian Culture. In this special issue, Laurel Brake, Bob Nicholson, and Paul Fyfe return to Leary’s article in order to evaluate how the field of periodicals research has changed and what its future may be. The roundtable closes with Patrick Leary’s “Response: Search and Serendipity.” All four pieces welcome the changes that have been brought about as a result of digitization but offer salutary advice on how to proceed with the challenges such changes bring.

In the spirit of innovation, we wanted to create a special issue that acknowledged the changing landscape of periodicals research over the past nine years. At the 2011 RSVP Conference at Canterbury, we engaged in debates about digitization as part of two teaching and learning roundtables. In 2006, Teresa Mangum began to introduce the voice of the student into debates about pedagogy, and in 2011, we added another—the voice of the digital publisher. The following year, VPR published a forum entitled “Teaching and Learning in the Digital Humanities Classroom.” The editor acknowledged that both sessions at the conference had “raised compelling questions and sparked productive conversations” and that publication of these pieces was intended “to promote further discussion and exchange among members of RSVP.”² Since that time, RSVP has gone from strength to strength, including the redesign of its website in 2014. During this time period, RSVP also appointed its first graduate representative, Helena Goodwyn. RSVP has always supported graduate students as the future of the society and thus established a means through which they might contribute to debates on how RSVP can develop and change. To this end, we introduced a new feature in this special issue, “Spotlight on Postgraduate Research.” Linda Friday, a doctoral student at Edge Hill University, has been grappling with the challenges of working with digital archives whilst researching Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). Her essay raises interesting questions about how we should prepare our students to work with such resources and thus builds upon many of the points raised by Kristin Mahoney and Kaitlyn Abrams, whose essay specifically considers the undergraduate classroom.

The essays in this special issue were chosen with the assistance of Kim Edwards Keates, a postdoctoral researcher at Liverpool John Moores University, whose interest in digital humanities stems from her work with Helen Rogers on a Higher Education Academy–funded project, “Students as Partners in Online Research Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange.” This project explored and emphasised the pedagogical implications of student-led research collaboration and online public engagement. In a second-year course, “Prison Voices: Crime, Conviction and Confession c. 1700–1900,” and a third-year course, “Writing Lives,” Rogers worked...