A Collaborative Space
The Keywords Collaboratory is a wiki-based space where classes and other working groups can collaborate on keyword projects that take their method, focus, or inspiration from the essays published in Keywords for American Cultural Studies or on this site. The new keyword essays produced in the Collaboratory extend the insights and contributions of the published collection.

The essays produced in the Collaboratory typically have multiple authors and may encourage ongoing revision. Some participants produce annotated and hyperlinked versions of dictionary definitions. Others comment directly on keyword essays published in the book or elsewhere. Still others create and reflect upon textual, audio, or visual archives. Future participants may build on this material as they continue to innovate.

As Collaboratory participants engage the terms contained in and omitted from the volume, as they generate new clusters of keywords and explore their intersections, as they track new genealogies and emerging points of agreement and disagreement, they produce dynamic knowledge formations that no stable print-based book could accomodate.

A Public Space
Anyone may view the Collaboratory. Individuals outside of a course or working group may offer comments on the work-in-progess, though only those involved in a specific assignment should edit their group's pages. Operating on the principle that knowledge production is a more public than private activity, the Collaboratory offers opportunities for unanticipated feedback without disrupting the focus of the collaboration itself. It also creates the possibility of structured collaboration across courses offered at different institutions or working groups operating in multiple locations. It is important to emphasize this to Collaboratory participants from the start, since writing for a broader public is different from most academic writing, which usually has an audience of one: the instructor.

Helpful Links
Read more about keyword assignments.
Read New Keyword Essays, written by researchers and students.

If you are an instructor of a class or an organizer of a working group, take a look at the Resources for Instructors page.