Marshall Magazine Spring 2022

project is complete, all new Whitman discoveries will be added to the Walt Whitman Archive. His collaboration with Turpin will continue, as well. In his second role as director of digital humanities, Schöberlein said the use of technology is another way to engage students and get them excited about learning new things about old literature. “They get over their presentism and realize there are commonalities. It is a pathway to embrace writings from the 19th century and see their relevancy to today,” he explained. With Marshall now offering a minor track of study in digital humanities, there is also potential for a whole new appreciation of the humanities. “The goal is to introduce students to digital humanities. It fits nicely between humanities and computer science, from leveraging computational text to thinking critically about code, producing 3D printing projects or perhaps encoding a Whitman letter for digital publication.” As word spreads about his work with the Whitman texts, Schöberlein is uniquely positioned in a new era of literary discovery that has a far-reaching impact. “It helps to get Marshall University’s name out there

with national exposure. It also strengthens the digital humanities internally for faculty who may be skeptical of bringing in computational tools. And finally, it gets students excited to create and do things differently.” Through his classroom teachings, Schöberlein is inspiring a new generation of students to explore Whitman’s work. “It was a lucky coincidence that I was teaching a gradu ate class on Whitman and Dickinson this year, so I had a chance to bring some of my findings into the classroom,” Schöberlein said. “One of my students ended up mean ingfully incorporating some of these new findings into her excellent final paper.” Schöberlein is steadfast in his belief that it’s never too late to discover literary works and encourages beginners to take the first step in finding meaning within them. “I think poetry pushes language to, and at times be yond, the breaking point and allows us to see and feel connections that we cannot otherwise perceive.”

Shelly Ridgeway is a freelance writer living in Huntington, West Virginia.

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