A keyword collaboratory is an interactive online space where classes or groups can work together on new keywords projects. Using the same wiki format as Wikipedia, it invites collaboration and experimentation.  It enables you to build on and revise the essays published in Keywords for American Cultural Studies, but it also encourages you to imagine more diverse forms and genres of inquiry and publication.

We imagine that individual essays contained in Keywords for American Cultural Studies will act as a catalyst for some keywords projects.  In other cases, classes and working groups may combine terms contained in the volume (sex-nation-race), mix terms in the volume with others that do not appear there (community-participation-ethnography), or work on new terms (labor) and clusters of terms (labor-technology).  Some projects may produce essays that read like those contained in the volume.  Others may diverge from that form by commenting on existing essays, annotating dictionary definitions, or creating archives of textual, audio, or visual materials.

One reason we are interested in the keyword collaboratories is because we can’t predict what will happen there.  In our introduction to the volume, we conclude with a list of terms about which we would like to hear and read more, and we note that any such list is necessarily incomplete.  The collaboratories are one place where this work and reflection can happen.

If you are an instructor of a class or an organizer of a working group, have a look at the suggested assignments and sample syllabi on the resources for instructors page.  Consider what keyword or keywords you want to work on, how you want to approach the project, and contact us to set up a keyword collaboratory.   If your keyword project produces a final product, you may want to submit it for publication on this website.  If so, be sure to contact Deborah Kimmey, the Keywords Project Coordinator.