Crew,

What’s the point of focusing on Shakespeare in an African American literature course? Well, under normal circumstances we probably wouldn’t. But we’re on our Genius ish right now, so gotta give your Stratford dude a quick look. Give me a sec to explain.

If we’re going to think seriously about the value of crowd-sourced annotation, we can’t go wrong by taking a look at what some of the leading Shakespeare annotators/editors have been up to here on Lit. Genius.

We’ve taken account of solo stand outs, such as the legendary Perfectrhyme and the in-depth, intra-textual work of Dalmo. Cool. But now, we should consider what the collective value of annotation looks like. And I know, we’re becoming more immersed in rap music. Still, we can learn a lot from a crowd of Shakespearean scholars on Genius.

So far, dozens of Genius scholars have contributed to Shakespeare’s works, and for now we might turn our attention to the top five: areacode313, Jeeho, Perfectrhyme, Stephen Pringle, and JalfredPeacock. Among others, they have devoted considerable time and energy to producing high-quality explanations of Shakespeare’s plays. That devotion of time and energy over time constitutes an important feature of their work.

I sometimes wonder what leads them to spend so much time on Shakespeare. What makes Perfectrhyme so engaged with the works? What about Jeeho? Or how about areacode313? Or Stephen Pringle? Or JalfredPeacock? (Perhaps we’ll have to reach out to them and ask).

The collaborative or interrelated nature of what they are doing constitutes another important feature of their annotation work on Shakespeare. If you check out any of the most widely viewed plays by Shakespeare on Genius, you’ll see contributions from those top 5. What makes their collective work stand out and what in turns makes the analyses of Shakespeare’s lines pop relates to the degrees to which these leading Genius scholars converge on a set of common texts.

The Genius scholar Dalmo recently made an important point along these lines: When you see Picasso’s paintings, given you have an eye for the visual arts, you realize his prowess as an artist. But to call him one of the greatest painters is to draw on the exegesis, critiques, and think pieces that elucidate his work and unpack its meaning. An artist’s “greatness” is only solidified after (or with) an exhaustive critical response to the art. In other words, the greatness of an artist or perhaps anyone for that matter is linked to the many critical responses and evaluations of his or her works. Shakespeare’s reputation as a G.O.A.T. is inextricably linked to the exhaustive treatments of his works by crowds of scholars.

The convergence of those Genius scholars on key Shakespeare texts is not coincidental. Instead, they appear to be communicating with each other – another important feature of their annotation work – in deciding where and how to devote their energies. That communication comes in the forms of notes, messages, questions to the group, and suggestions; it also appears in the form of minor edits here and there to each other’s annotations on lines in Shakespeare’s plays; and the communication appears as the scholars link to each other's annotations.

Of course, with many major educational projects on Genius, things can be traced to at least two pairs of invisible hands. Their efforts give us a sense too of why we see the convergence of lead scholars in particular areas, or why we’ll see movements in direction at specific moments.

Finally, one more notable feature with this collective annotation work involves the task (many tasks in fact) of making lines and specific words from Shakespeare accessible to general readers, not only specialists. In the analog world, leading Shakespeare scholars are inclined to produce work for other Shakespeare scholars and specialists. By contrast, the open access nature of the Genius platform, not to mention the site’s overall purpose, means that the leading Genius Shakespeare scholars are, among other things, annotating and explicating for the masses, so to speak.

I’m hoping that a few glances at what folks like Jeeho, areacode313, JalfredPeacock, Perfectrhyme, Stephen Pringle, and really, many, many others are doing on Genius can give us some useful ideas and models as we seek to pinpoint what the value of crowd-sourced annotation might look like with our subjects and topics. What would a devotion of time and energy mean for annotation work on Nicki Minaj and June Jordan? How might more active communication among annotators and editors shape ongoing and future work on Amiri Baraka and Jay Z? What might a convergence of scholars on black book history mean? In the coming weeks, our final papers will address answers to such questions.