Reimagining the Literary Classic: Teaching Literature through Adaptations

FAIN: FV-261751-18

Regents of the University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA 95064-1077)
John O. Jordan (Project Director: February 2018 to November 2021)
Marty Russell Gould (Co Project Director: August 2018 to November 2021)

A three-week seminar for 16 school teachers on adaptations of literary works.

This three-week seminar for middle and high school teachers uses two case studies - Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations" - to show teachers how they can use literary imitations and appropriations to connect the study of literature with the development of their students' skills in critical reading, analytical reasoning, argumentative writing, and creative production. Informed by current and emerging trends in adaptation studies and drawing on scholarship in literary, film, and cultural studies, the seminar examines two frequently taught nineteenth-century texts as reimagined and refracted in imitative texts, plays, and films, including "Rebecca", "Wide Sargasso Sea", "Mr. Pip", and more.