Feature Writing Profile

by, Allie Mosher

Kristen Abbott Bennett first learned how to encode in an empty hotel restaurant in New Orleans at a Shakespeare conference.

Bennett and Dr. Janelle Jenstad, the colleague who first taught her TEI (Text Encoding Initiative), then decided to teach a collaborative course in Victoria, British Columbia – where Jenstad teaches – and Stonehill College – where Bennett worked at the time.

Since the Digital Humanities program had not yet taken shape at Stonehill, Bennett called her  course “Pop Culture & ‘Bibliodigigogy’ in Early Modern England,” and it remains a highlight of her career, she said. (See sample materials published by Northeastern University, Women Writers Project)

“We definitely had a spirit of adventure! I had barely learned how to code, and next I was teaching it. That’s how Digital Humanities is,” Bennett said.  

In Digital Humanities, encoding consists of digitizing archival texts and making them available using consistent editorial practices like those developed by the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative).

Now an Associate Professor of English at Framingham State University, Bennett keeps up a busy schedule between teaching ancient, medieval, and early modern literature, as well as working on The Kit Marlowe Project, which she founded and directs. This project is an open-access site for students to discover more about Christopher Marlowe – for whom Bennett’s cat is named  –  through transcriptions, encoding, and archival work.

“My students were frustrated that there was little about Marlowe out in the wilds of the internet. I half-jokingly suggested they create a site for all things Marlowe and they leapt at the opportunity. It was magical,” Bennett said. “I didn’t plan it. It just happened. And it still keeps happening.”

Diving headfirst into projects like this is a common aspect of Bennett’s life. As a student, she wrote her dissertation on the 16^th century playwright and poet Thomas Nashe, despite being told that it was “career suicide,” she said.

“But I thought if I could do Nashe, I could do anything,” she added.

Caroline Hawkes, a junior English major at FSU, was a teaching assistant for two of Bennett’s classes and is currently an intern for The Kit Marlowe Project.

“When she (Bennett) originally asked me to TA, I was hesitant,” said Hawkes. “It was an environment I wasn’t expecting to like but I ended up really appreciating. … It was a very welcoming, friendly environment.

“I know that [The Kit Marlowe Project is] a resource that other people can use, and I think that’s amazing, but something else that is really cool about it is it is a very easy way for people to get experience with coding.”

Adam Levine, a senior English major at FSU, said Bennett’s course ‘Development of the Drama’ was one of the first classes he took at the school after transferring. “She was one of the first professors I had [at FSU],” he said.

“And then I just loved her so much I took ‘Intro to Digital Humanities’ with her [the next semester],” Levine added. “Even though Development of the Drama and Digital Humanities are very different courses … she was super passionate about both of them.”

Levine said, “from my understanding … Kit Marlowe was another poet during Shakespeare’s time … and that’s her passion.”

Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Nashe are all writers Bennett said she tends to focus on in her teaching and projects. But her interest didn’t always lie in the Renaissance, she said.

“I started as an Americanist. And then I went and read what they read. And that’s how I landed on Shakespeare and Spenser and Nashe and Marlowe,” said Bennett. “I love this period because it helps me find some grounding in a world that I don’t understand.”

“The more I study early literature and history the more I feel like we’re all connected,” Bennett added. “We got through that, and people always think we’re never going to get through the next thing, yet we tend to.”

“Professor Bennett does so many things,” said Hawkes. “She is constantly writing things and has projects she’s working on. She has so many classes and so many interns. … I am really glad she’s getting the recognition of something being written about her.”