Undergraduate Research and Publishing: The Aperio Venture

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The presenter’s university has instituted a new kind of seminar that results in texts in the Humanities that have been edited, annotated, and/or translated by undergraduate students in collaboration with faculty; the series of texts is called Aperio. Students also work with faculty to design and publish the texts. The books are intended to be of interest to all readers but should be of particular interest and use to college students and in undergraduate classes. The presenter taught the first of these seminars; under his guidance the students produced a new, heavily annotated translation of “Perpetua’s Passion,” which contains the earliest extant writing by a Christian woman. This text, and the entire series, was established to help Humanities students engage in serious research through course work. The presentation will outline (1) the process whereby students from three different disciplines (Classics, Publishing, Art Design) collaborated in a course setting to produce the book, (2) the impediments to this sort of collaborative undergraduate scholarship, (3) the strategies by which the impediments were overcome, and (4) the pedagogical advantages of the project. The discussion will enable participants to consider the possibility of starting such a project at their institutions and to offer advice for the improvement of the Aperio Series.

Stream: Curriculum and Pedagogy; Student Learning, Learner Experiences, Learner Diversity

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Walsh has published (in Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K., and the U.S.) on the Classical Tradition (articles on Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, and John Henry Newman), the clash between the ancient Romans and Greeks, the Christians in the Roman Empire, Greek biography, and the history and character of Christmas. He has studied and/or taught in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Germany, and the U.S.