November 26, 2008

Well Marked

A couple of weeks ago, Nigel Beale posted some tips from Mortimer Adler on 'How to Mark Your Books "Fruitfully and Intelligently."' The recommendations sounded pretty familiar, though understandably there's no mention of my own must-have accessory, the Post-It Note. I think anyone who teaches literature has to get over any initial reservations about making a mess on the page; a large part of what we want to convey to our students is that reading is an active process, for one thing, and writing on the text is one way to make sure you are actually engaging with it. Textual annotations can also serve as prompts and guides for lecture and discussion. As someone who mostly teaches 'loose baggy monsters,' I also feel that one of my primary responsibilities is just being able to find important passages to help students make their observations and analyses specific. Herewith, some samples of a well-used teaching copy of Middlemarch, marked up Maitzen style.

First, the Big Picture Post-It Index and Finder's Guide.


Next, the Inside Cover Index to Essential Information:

Here's a sample of a key passage annotated for teaching point of view and free indirect discourse:


And a sample of a Cross-Referencing Post-It--probably the most important kind (it's blue because it marks the blue-green boudoir passages, of course!):


Here's this year's Post-It opus:


See how you can track Jo through the novel? And the hot pink tabs point to the clues to Lady Dedlock's past. Hmmm. It starts to look a little obsessive, doesn't it?

5 comments:

NigelBeale said...

This is mighty impressive Rohan. Colour-content co-ordinated post it notes... proof of passion...

While all of this interaction is de rigeur with 'reading' copies, of course it's hands off when it comes to the first editions in the collection...

Rohan Maitzen said...

Passion, obsession, tomato, tomahto, eh? It does save a great deal of time during class discussion ("Gee, I know that part is in here somewhere" is a great debate killer).

Robby Virus said...

Impressive indeed! I've never used a Kindle before, but I wonder if there soon won't be some type of application where you can mark up an electronic version of a novel and have those remarks in some kind of searchable, easily accessed format. I know, a lot of people don't like the idea of electronic media for novels (myself included) but for teaching it might be quite useful.

Rohan Maitzen said...

I am interested in the Kindle partly for just that reason--plus these books in their conventional formats are heavy to lug around! The Kindle isn't available outside the US yet, but some day... The new model of the Sony Reader (which is available up here) seems to have an annotation feature. Santa?

lucy tartan said...

I do love that last photo of the Bleak House post-its.