“Undisciplining Jane Austen”
Do you think Jane Austen just wrote floofy romance novels? Far from it! Do Austen’s novels simply represent a dreamy love story, encouraging readers to find their Mr. Darcy? No way! While Austen lives as a romance writer within the realm of popular culture, her novels are deeply engaged with the political and social issues of her world. At times quite radical, at others disappointingly conservative, Austen’s novels are much, much more than romance novels.
Our work this semester will be to read Austen deeply and seriously, while seeking new ways to read her work and the Romantic era in which she is situated. Given Austen’s canonicity and her place within the rise of the British novel, we’ll examine what it means to bring out the whiteness of her novels and foreground the realist novel’s racializing and globalizing impulses. In other words, we will “Undiscipline” Jane Austen. This entails placing her work more firmly within the contexts of transatlantic slavery, global capitalism, and the growing British empire; centering racial logic while rethinking the fields in which Austen’s work is most often situated; and devising “new modes and methods” of research and analysis as we put the past and present in conversation. We will also place Austen and her world more fully within the context of Hawai‘i and its world. The result will be not only a more critical and nuanced portrait of a canonical author with lingering appeal, but a more thorough exploration of the historical, political, and cultural context in which these texts were produced.
Alongside Austen’s novels, students will also read a selection of primary sources from the 18th and 19th century, as well as critical sources on Jane Austen’s fiction and “undisciplining” 18th and 19th century studies. We will also discuss a selection of recent film adaptations as well as Bridgerton and color-blind casting.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Become familiar with Jane Austen’s body of work, her critical history, and the time in which she was writing from a global perspective
- Read a text critically and actively, through performing close readings and textual analysis
- Discuss texts in a purposeful, intellectual, and thoughtful manner by exploring their themes, style, and historical contexts
- Understand the relationship between literature and culture through situating texts within their historical and cultural contexts
- Become familiar with critical conversations surrounding undisciplining the fields of 18th and 19th century literary and cultural studies
- Write fluently and critically about literary texts
Assignments and Requirements:
- ‘Ōlelo no‘eau assignment: pick an ‘ōlelo no’eau, put it in conversation with our reading, and at the end of the semester write your own “wise saying” inspired by the work of our class
- Film adaptation analysis: analysis of a recent film or television adaptation of Austen (or Bridgerton!)
- Austen in Hawai’i netflix adaptation: adapt an Austen novel for the screen by placing it in Hawai’i
- Analytical essay
- In-person final discussion (during the date/time of our final exam)
- Reading quizzes
Required Texts: Please procure a hard copy of the Penguin editions whenever possible.
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1817)
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
- Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
- Jane Austen, Emma (1815)
- Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817)
- Selected primary and secondary sources available on Laulima