About

This seminar at the University of Mary Washington is a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the work of one of America’s most brilliant poets and in a collaborative project with students from three other universities under a National Endowment for the Humanities grant called “Looking for Whitman.”   We will analyze Walt Whitman’s poetic and prose work deeply, focusing most specifically on the writings related to the geographic space in which we study—in our case, Fredericksburg and Washington, DC, where Whitman spent time in the Civil War years.  The class, which will include visitation to appropriate local sites and archives, will situate Whitman historically, geographically, culturally, biographically–AND digitally.  In collaboration with our partner classes, we will build a rich digital network of our thoughts, discoveries, and (critical, informative, interrogative, creative, reflective) writing.  Come travel with us and Whitman on one more open road: that of distributed, collective learning.