Teaching Tuesday: Prime Time Practicum

Next semester, I’m teaching the Practicum in Editing and Publishing for the Editing and Publishing Certificate in the Department of English. The goal of this class is to give the students some hands-on experience working with publishing work flows, developmental and copy editing, and post-production work. Over the past few semesters, the class has focused on producing the literary journal that I edit —North Dakota Quarterly — and some projects under development by The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota.   

I’ve taught this class before, but it has generally been on a small scale with only 3-5 students at a time. This gave me ample time to build some rapport and tailor the class to both student interest and the projects at hand. Next semester, I’ll have 12 students in the class which means that it’s going to need a bit more of a formal structure as much to preserve my sanity as to articulate student expectations clearly.

We have four projects with varying workflows, deadlines, and goals.

1. North Dakota Quarterly 91.1/2. This is the most pressing project. Students will help with the organization of the issue and some modest design issues. The issue is due to the publisher on March 1.

2. Grand Forks 150. This project is in collaboration with the Department of History and The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. In anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the founding of Grand Forks, the Department of History has started to collect 150, 150-word essays on the city’s history. By the start of the spring semester, we should have about 50 of these complete. The goal of the class will be to do some developmental and copy editing to these 50 essays, design the book layout, and produce a preliminary run of the book to encourage the next 100 short essays. This will be due by April 1.

3. Muslims of Darürrahat. This is another book project in collaboration with NDQ and The Digital Press. It is a utopian novel written by İsmail Gaspirali and translated by Çiğdem Pala Mull and edited by Sharon Carson. The Digital Press will publish this book in the spring as part of the NDQ book series. The copy editing is nearly done and the cover design is underway. The practicum students will help with the production of book design, layout, and proofs.

4. Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres. This is another collaboration between NDQ and The Digital Press. This is a collection of poems written by Clell Gannon and published in 1924. The goal of republishing this work is to celebrate its centennial and to shine some attention on the work of this prairie poet. We also want to bring attention to “Midwestern Modernism” and show how regional voices, like NDQ, continued to larger cultural currents. We have generous support from the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation to support cover design and copy editing. The class will be responsible for elements of book design, some editing, and some elements of project management.

In the background there will be a few other projects percolating through the publication process. We have David Pettegrew’s volume on the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey which is currently in page proofs, we have a book on the Athenian street artist WD about to enter production, and we have two book manuscripts about to enter copy editing. My goal is to involve the students in as many of these projects as possible, but to do it in a structured way. 

More on this class as it happens!