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In the more than 250 years since her birth, Jane Austen’s literary legacy has been continually reimagined, rehashed, and remixed across popular culture – from heritage cinema and global adaptations to online fandoms and digital mash-ups. In this seminar, we will examine how her works and their historical contexts of empire, class, and gender continue to live on in film, television, heritage culture, tourism, and material culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Critical concepts from adaptation studies, heritage and nostalgia theory, cultural materialism, and postcolonial criticism will guide our discussions. Potential case studies include canonical adaptations in film and series, such as Pride and Prejudice (BBC, 1995), parodic reinventions like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2010/2016), Jane Austen festivals, heritage tourism, digital projects like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, video games, and phenomena such as “Austenmania” and “Regencycore.” We will also engage with virtual heritage resources and Austen merchandise to reflect on how Austen is curated and consumed today. The seminar invites critical reflection on the many ways in which Austen’s work has been adapted and appropriated across time and across media and on why the writer remains a touchstone for debates about national identity, nostalgia, and popular culture.
Please purchase and read until the beginning of term: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813). Edition: Oxford World’s Classics, introduction and notes by Christina Lupton, edited by James Kinsley (3rd edition, 2020). |
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