Jane Austen: In Her World and Ours

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

What is it about Jane Austen's fictional world that makes her novels so popular, and why do we continue to adapt her work on screen? This course considers the enduring appeal of Austen's novels from within and beyond their historical contexts. A particular focus of this course is her engagement with gender, but students will also consider how her novels respond to contemporary debates about emotion and mental health, the slave trade, war and empire, new money and class mobility, education, imagination, and the dangers of reading. Students will understand both Jane Austen's debt to previous writers and her own significant contributions to the genre of the novel. They will read all of Austen's major novels and selections from the Juvenilia and letters. They will also work in groups to critique a film version of a novel, analyzing what contemporary adaptations do with Austen and why. By the end of the course, students will appreciate the cultural and literary contexts from which these novels emerge, and will possess the critical capacities to address why they continue to speak to us today.