Marshall Magazine Spring 2022

To say that Schöberlein is a Walt Whitman enthu siast is an understatement. In addition to teaching a course on Whitman and Emily Dickinson during the fall semester, he has spent years as aWhitman scholar, including being involved with the Transatlantic Whi tman Associat ion that organizes the annual Whitman Week and the a t tendant sympos ium and the Whitman Studies Association that runs pan els at scholarly conferences. He is also working as con tributing editor for theWalt Whitman Archive, one of

Regarded as America’s f irst democrat ic poet , Whitman adopted poetic free verse that reflects the themes of the individual, body, soul, the nation and everyday life. Some schol ars suggest his works mir ror the founding values of America itself. “He is certainly the most well-remembered poet from the period that avoided rhyme; embraced long, free flowing lines; and relished in slang and innuendo,” said Schöberlein. Efforts by Schöberlein and Turpin to authenticate the writings began in the

“ These writings give insight into a period of time in Whitman’s life that we knew very little about until now … it’s very exciting stuff. ”

— Stefan Schöberlein

the oldest and most prestigious online archives in the country dedicated to digitizing and annotating all writ ings and historical documents relating to Walt Whitman. Born and raised in Bochum, Germany, Schöberlein is a first-generation college student who developed a love for reading at a young age. After spending a year of high school in Minnesota as an exchange student, he later attended the University of Iowa during an academic ex change year of college while studying to become a special education teacher. Two years later, he returned to Iowa and earned his Ph.D. in American literature. Fast forward to September 2021. That’s when the lit erary world learned that Schöberlein and his colleague, Dr. Zachary Turpin from the University of Idaho, had discovered two previously unknown sets of Walt Whitman writings. They first reported their findings in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review , and since then the discovery has been picked up by mainstream news outlets around the world. The writings include a collection of letters to the editor of the New Orleans Daily Crescent , a newspaper that Whitman helped establish during a three-month stay there. It was widely believed by literary scholars that Whitman only contributed to the Crescent while physi cally living in New Orleans, but research by Schöberlein and Turpin proves otherwise. “These writings give insight into a period of time in Whitman’s life that we knew very little about until now,” Schöberlein explained. “Everything from his interest in the republican revolutions in Europe to his thoughts on race and politics — it’s very exciting stuff.”

summer of 2019 and required plenty of patience and research to verify the writings as belonging to Whitman. Penned under the name “Manhattan” as a likely nod to Whitman’s upbringing in Long Island and his life in New York, the letters were published in the Crescent seven years prior to Whitman’s well-known Leaves of Grass collection of poems (published in 1855) and continued for months after Whitman returned to New York fromNew Orleans. Commonly referred to as a computational author ship assessment method, specific words and stylistic overlaps fromWhitman’s known works were mapped by Schöberlein against these unknown writings to compare and statistically measure the similarities. Additionally, several humorous sketches by Whitman and biographical evidence support the result of the computational assess ment — confirmation of 50 unknown texts representing more than 40,000 words attributed to Whitman. According to Schöberlein, one of the major benefits of teamwork on a project like this discovery is the shared knowledge and resources among professional colleagues. “My work while at Marshall has been all collaborative. It would take years or decades to do these projects by yourself. Collaboration allows you to brainstorm about things and test out theories you have with another ex pert, even before an official peer review gets underway. Also, this kind of evidence-based writing makes it easier to write as a team,” he said. This spring, Schöberlein will publish an edited col lection of Whitman’s writings. Titled Walt Whitman’s New Orleans: Sidewalk Sketches and Newspaper Rambles , it includes some of the newly discovered writings. Once the

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