Call for Contributions
Teaching Dickens's Compositional Process & Serial Form

Submission Deadline: January 31, 2026

The Digital Dickens Notes Project (www.dickensnotes.org) announces a call for participants to contribute lesson plans, assignments, or short essays about approaches to teaching with and about Charles Dickens’s working notes. Dickens Notes is a peer-reviewed, NEH-supported, open-access digital scholarly edition of the detailed working notes Charles Dickens kept for his novels in the second half of his career. Organizers are looking to feature approaches to teaching about Dickens’s compositional process, serial form, or other facets of his novels that make use of the working notes. Contributions can vary in form and focus, but should offer both:

• a practical component (e.g. a lesson plan describing classroom activities; a student-directed activity description; an assignment); and
• a concise (approximately 500-1000 words) critical introduction that describes the approach, pedagogical goals, and the appropriate course level and type within which the lesson plan or assignment has been or might be featured, along with a list of any relevant primary and secondary sources and resources.

While organizers look forward to contributions that center the working notes, they are also interested in approaches and assignments that feature Dickens's notes tangentially as part of a consideration of his serial form and/or compositional practice. For more information, please see the Call for Contributions or contact the project directors, Anna Gibson and Adam Grener, at dickensnotes@gmail.com.