Commonplacing and Commonplace Books: From Book History to Present-Day Pedagogy
Sunday, 12 January 2025
769 Commonplacing and Commonplace Books: From Book History to Present-Day Pedagogy
1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
Hilton New Orleans Riverside - Camp (3rd Floor)
This roundtable explores 18th- and 19th-century practices of commonplacing in British literature and in the modern American classroom today. Historically, commonplace books served a basic, mnemonic function: storing information in one common place for later access—but it also ushered in major innovations in book technologies, such as indexing, citations, coupage, and collage, from Romantic-era collectors of literary quotes, to Victorian-era friendship albums and annuals. The nineteenth century saw two major developments in commonplacing: it became a leisurely activity within the domestic sphere, and also a means of sociality and collaboration, particularly among young women and families.
Building on the work of 19-c. literary scholars on commonplace book traditions (Deidre Lynch, Jillian Hess, Mai-lin Cheng) and contemporary pedagogy theories surrounding “commons” spaces in composition rhetoric and literary studies (Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan; Dana D. Nelson; Jacqueline Jones Royster; Jessica Yood), this roundtable brings together six discussants who expand these existing scholarly and pedagogical conversations to address the following questions: What might a more formalized study of commonplace books teach us about genres such as notebooks, notetaking, drafts, unfinished, and nonlinear writing? What does commonplacing illustrate about the physicality of different inscription practices? How do artists and poets engage with ideas or commonplacing in creative works? Can commonplacing be a way to valorize copying or rote study as contemporary learning practices? How might commonplacing expand our conception of an intellectual commons, whether digitally or in the composition classroom and community?
This special session engages with the presidential theme of visibility by inviting sustained attention to an otherwise ‘minor’ or neglected form of authorship: How does commonplacing make visible the reading practices and creative processes of otherwise anonymous or unanthologized authors and artists, particularly young, unpublished women writers? How might greater emphasis on commonplacing make the work of scholars typically excluded from these institutions more visible? (This includes faculty from teaching-heavy institutions, contingent faculty, artists, etc.)
The speakers on this roundtable represent and serve community colleges, non-tenured lecturers, Hispanic-serving institutions, STEM and Agricultural institutions, public and private colleges, and multilingual first-year composition classrooms.
Speakers
Jillian Hess (Bronx Community C, City U of New York)
Jillian Hess is Professor of English at Bronx Community College, CUNY. She is the author of How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information: Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and Albums (Oxford University Press, 2022) which received the Honorable Mention certificate for the BARS First Book Prize and was short-listed for the SHARP DeLong Book History Prize. Read Jillian's most recent writing by subscribing to her popular newsletter, Noted.
“From Oxford University Press to Substack: Translating Academic Writing for a General Audience”
Join the Winter Commonplace Book Club!
Olivia Loksing Moy (Lehman C, City U of New York)
Olivia Loksing Moy is Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York's Lehman College. She is the author of The Gothic Forms of Victorian Poetry (2022) and the co-editor of Victorian Verse: The Poetics of Everyday Life (2023). She serves as Vice-President of the Keats-Shelley Association of America and as Director of The CUNY Rare Book Scholars.
“The Long and the Short of It: Commonplacing with Rossetti, Allingham and Porter”
K-SAA Public Outreach Commonplacing Portal
Alina Romo (Allan Hancock C, CA)
Alina Romo is Associate Professor of English at Allan Hancock College. She earned her Ph.D. in English from New York University where she was a Halsband Fellow in Eighteenth Century Studies. She also holds a master's degree in Scandinavian Literature and Languages from UCLA, specifically 18th- and 19th-century Norwegian literature. Alina works in conceptual history and her current project argues for the linguistic centrality of 18th c. translation theories within the development of the period’s aesthetic ethos, that of the “Spirit of the Age.” She holds a seat on the MLA Higher Education and the Profession Community Colleges Forum and is a frequent reviewer at Nordicum Mediterraneum, a journal of Nordic and Mediterranean studies.
“Building Community through Commonplace Books: Engaging English Majors at the Community College”
Kacie Wills (Allan Hancock C, CA)
Kacie Wills is Assistant Professor of English at Allan Hancock College. She is the recipient of research grants from both the K-SAA and the Huntington Library and is co-editor of the book, Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Routledge 2020). She is the co-creator of the website sarahsophiabanks.com and is the co-editor of this special issue on Commonplacing and Commonplace Books. Her recent publications include essays in English Studies, Romanticism on the Net, The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and The Edinburgh Companion to Romanticism and the Arts.
“The Diary vs. Commonplace Books of Thomazine Pearse Leigh: Personal Writing and Intended Audience”
“An Interview with Ellen Gruber Garvey”
“Artist Spotlight: Candace Hicks”
Jessica Yood (Lehman C and The Graduate Center, City U of New York)
Jessica Yood is Associate Professor of English at Lehman College and The Graduate Center, CUNY where she teaches courses in composition, rhetoric and contemporary literature. The Composition Commons: Writing a New Idea of the University, was published in April 2024 and she is working on a new book about invigorating the humanities in American higher education. Jessica blogs at CUNY Academic Commons.
“‘The Power to Write’: Commonplacing Curricula and the University We Need Now”
Campus News cover story: “What I learned from my students and Instagram: Write more, worry less”
Jessica Hanselman Gray (not able to attend), (U of California, Davis)
Jessica Gray is a lecturer in English and in the University Writing Program at the University of California, Davis. She completed the PhD in Literature, with a Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies, at UC Davis. She has presented and published on early modern science, reproductive metaphors of knowledge production, and performance-based pedagogy. In addition to teaching literature and writing courses, she is currently helping to develop curriculum for a series of science communication workshops designed to help scientists articulate their research to policymakers and the general public.
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Commonplace Book”
By Jessica Gray, University of California, Davis, and Bethany E. Qualls, Université Caen Normandie
Presider
Christopher Rovee (Louisiana State U, Baton Rouge)
Christopher Rovee is Robert Penn Warren Professor of English at Louisiana State University, where he teaches courses in 18th- and 19th-century literature, poetry and poetics, and critical theory. He is the author of New Critical Nostalgia: Romantic Lyric and the Crisis of Academic Life (Fordham, 2024) and Imagining the Gallery: The Social Body of British Romanticism (Stanford), as well as of articles on the history of close reading, ruins tourism, early photography, painting and literature, and contemporary ideas about museums.
Roundtable Discussion
Jillian Hess, author of How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information: Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and Albums (2022), will discuss her unexpected transition from writing for scholarly audiences to a more public readership through the digital platform Stubstack. “Noted,” which explores the notetaking practices of famous artists and writers, has amassed 26,000 followers! Turning to contemporary artists, Kacie Wills draws from recent interviews to highlight how creators use commonplacing in their artistic process, particularly book artist Candace Hicks, whose Common Threads cloth-embroidery series engages with themes of accessibility, dilettantism, cataloging, and inscription. Working from a book history framework, Olivia Moy presents archival examples from Robert Browning, D.G. Rossetti, and Jane Porter to address long-form copying – copying the entire commonplace book of another author, marginalia and all. What physical and mental toll did this taxing process entail, and what does it teach us about methods of duplication in research, commemoration, and mourning?
The following three speakers will discuss the many affordances of teaching through commonplacing: attention to the material text, greater awareness surrounding techniques of handwriting and inscription; information storage and organization methods; and historical connections to modern, digital platforms, including writing communities and university commons. Jessica Hanselman Gray (unable to attend) explored commonplacing as a useful and relatable teaching tool in general education and advanced grammar courses, particularly at a science-heavy agricultural campus. Connecting commonplacing techniques to contemporary digital practices of networking and self-publishing, Alina Romo frames commonplacing as “Pinterest before Pinterest.” American literature students use analog note-taking to respond personally to diverse textual materials, including Indigenous creation stories, abolitionist texts, women’s rights pamphlets, and gothic fiction. Drawing on her studies of first-year composition classroom, Jessica Yood explores the concept of “genres of the commons”: intimate, informal writing activities that create peer-to-peer knowledge networks. Her recent book, The Composition Commons, shows how these genres create collectivity, fostering a space that cultivates reflective, emergent, shared knowledge, encouraging intellectual and civic engagement.