Jane Austen: Summer Session 1 (5/22-6/30)
Online Sync (Zoom): MWF 9:00-10:20
Online Async: TTR (all work due by 5 pm)
NOTE: Students are required to have a working camera and microphone to take this class. During our Zoom sessions, you will be required to have your camera and microphone at all times.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This class will introduce you to the fiction of Jane Austen and the social issues of the early nineteenth century in England. We will situate Austen’s novels in their rich cultural and literary context by considering how her work is shaped by and responds to developments such as the rise of women writers and readers in the Romantic era, the rise and development of the British novel, the French Revolution and working-class movements in England, marriage and gender ideologies, British slavery and the slave trade, and the growth of the British Empire. In order to accomplish this goal, you will also read a selection of primary sources from the 18th and 19th century, as well as critical sources on Jane Austen’s fiction. We will also spend time connecting Austen’s world to our own contemporary moment.
As an online hybrid class, we will meet on Zoom three days a week (MWF); for these sessions you are required to have your camera and microphone on at all times. These sessions will be very participation-heavy, and you should expect to contribute to discussion every day. For our asynchronous work (TTR), you will write your own posts and respond to those of your peers. On Tuesdays, you will be asked to write about our contextual readings and connect them to the novel under discussion for that week. On Thursdays, you will respond to more substantive discussion questions about our novels, connecting both our Zoom discussions, the contextual sources, and our main text for the week. All asynchronous work will be due by 5 pm. The final project will contain a few different options, and will include both creative and critical options that ask you to put Austen’s work in conversation with our contemporary world and its social and political issues.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1817)
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
- Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
- Jane Austen, Emma (1815)
- Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817)
- Broadview Online: Jane Austen in Context (purchase here)
REQUIREMENTS AND ASSIGNMENTS:
- Zoom Participation: 20%
- Asynchronous work: 50%
- Contextual reading posts and discussion (Tuesdays)
- Discussion Questions (Thursdays)
- Final Project: 30%