9 Invitation to Student Contributor
[Date]
Dear [Student Name]:
On behalf of myself and my co-author, Stacy de Berner, I am writing to invite you to contribute to an e-book we are creating tentatively titled Shakespeare and/as Adaptation: Models to Inspire and Embolden Students’ Creative and Critical Engagement.
This open educational resource (OER) grows out of our English 2HT3 Shakespeare: Histories and Tragedies course. As you may remember, this course invited students to critically analyze and creatively intervene in Shakespeare’s 400+ year legacy through the final project assignment focused on Shakespeare and/as adaptation. Many student projects for our English 2HT3 course were truly inspiring in terms of thoughtful research-creation, original ideas, and astute close analysis.
In hopes of encouraging and emboldening future students toward their own critically and creative engagements with Shakespeare, our open access book will act as a repository of several outstanding projects by previous students in this course. Our plan is to pilot an initial version for Winter 2022 that includes a small number of model student projects (we are hoping to include examples of all three project options). Subsequently, our plan is to publish this resource as an open-access e-book that includes additional student project examples as well as an index that identifies projects according to play(s) discussed, theme(s) addressed, and adaptation media type (if relevant).
We very much hope that you will agree to contribute your English 2HT3 final project as one of the featured examples of excellent and inspiring student work. This free open access book will hopefully be used in future versions of English 2HT3 as a resource for students as they approach their final project proposals and assignments. It will also be publicly available online at no cost through the Ontario Open Library initiative. By sharing the book as a resource that is publicly available, we hope that students elsewhere will be inspired to their own creative and critical engagements with Shakespeare. We also hope that future instructors, including at other universities, will adopt and adapt the Shakespeare and/as Adaptation final project assignment in their own courses.
Should you agree to contribute your English 2HT3 final project, you will gain a public audience for your research and be able to include it on your resumé as an academic publication. You will also benefit future instructors, students, and general readers interested in Shakespeare and the ways that his plays speak to pressing issues of his own day as well as our own.
Students who agree to contribute to the book will have three choices for attribution: final projects can appear under the student’s legal or chosen name, under a pseudonym, or anonymously. Students whose projects are featured in the book will also be given the choice to license their work under a CC BY-NC license or a CC BY-NC-ND license. CC BY-NC licenses allow users to copy, distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the content in any medium or format but only for non-commercial purposes, and as long as attribution is given to the original creator. CC BY-NC-ND licenses similarly allow users to copy and distribute content for noncommercial purposes only, and as long as attribution is given to the original creator, but with the additional restriction that no derivations or adaptation are allowed.
When deciding between the attribution options and between the two licenses, we recommend that you consider whether or not you are willing to be named publicly in connection with your work as well as whether you wish to allow users to adapt or derive new work based on your contribution.
The book as a whole – including but not limited to preface, introduction, explanation of the final project assignment and marking rubric, and index — will be made available under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC because we hope that other instructors will adapt these portions (e.g. the assignment instructions and marking rubric) for non-commercial purposes. Some student contributors may be similarly happy to have users borrow from and make changes to their final project content, but others may not. This is why we are giving individual students the choice between the two CC licensing options indicated above. For further details about these particular licenses and about Creative Commons licensing more generally, please consult About Creative Commons licenses.
In addition to designating your choice of attribution and either CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND license, you will be given the opportunity to review a draft and make final changes prior to the book’s publication. At this point, or at any other time prior to the book’s publication, you will also have the right to request that your name and/or work be removed from the book, or that the license for your contribution be changed. We anticipate sending drafts for review by [date]. Due to the open licensing of this publication, it will not be possible for us to track down any distributed or copied versions after it has been made public. For this reason, students cannot revoke permission for their contributions to the book after its publication.
If you are interested in contributing, we ask that you review the attached copy of your project (we have made some minor edits regarding citations and quotations), and then complete and sign the attached permission form. Please return your signed form to us via email on or before [date].
Can you let me know you’ve received this invitation asap, and no later than [date]?
Thank you,
Melinda Gough
Professor
Department of English and Cultural Studies
McMaster University
