Sorting through the reports

We should have a substantial number of short recommendations of writers from the period to work with today. My hope is that through this process we'll now have identified most of the people we will want to be spending time with (of course, along with a number that we won't), but others we should have found may yet come up as we continue our work. For now, though, let's see if we can narrow our interest down to a few to start with.

The best way I know to begin on this will be for everyone to look at the recommendations of other people. So I'll set up some groups and ask groups to exchange their recommendations with another group.

When you've got your new set of recommendations, see if you can agree on three or four writers who seem to appear most often, and with the most convincing quotations. Decide on a list, and write the names of the three or four (or five, if necessary) writers on the whiteboard. Get the recommendation sheets back to their authors. We'll discuss what's on the board, measure it against what people recommended themselves, see what patterns there are, and decide on a few writers about whom we need to know more right now, to begin with.

When we've decided on some writers to begin learning about and reading, I'll use the cards to assign them at random, and send people out to find answers to these questions:

• What are the best, or most useful, sources of information about the writer and her works?
• What are the most important and immediate things we should know about the writer and her works?
• What are the most important works?
• What are the works we should read to begin with (that are actually available to be read)?

Between now and Monday at class time, post your report (with references) on the Important Writers Forum, under the name of your writer.

More on formatting and presentation

Read the comments people posted on your report. I've added some general comments to the top of the Forum, and we'll be coming back to these issues as we go.