This coming March, I'm participating in a seminar at the Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting called "Teaching Textual Studies in/through Shakespeare," organized by Sarah Nevill and Brett Hirsch. I considered writing about one of the assignment I designed for my Shakespeare course last term—making a quarto or adopt-a-book. I thought writing about them at some length would give me occasion to reflect on what worked well and what I need to tweak if I use them again. Both assignments were attempts to teach early modern textual histories at an institution that has special collections that skew sharply post-1900, so I thought I might also discuss these assignments in that context.
But then I remembered a conversation I had with a few people on Twitter last year...
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