University of Redlands
Professional Bio:
Heather King (B.A. Boston University, M.A./Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison), has been teaching in the University of Redlands Department of English since 2000. Her courses include regular offerings in her research field of eighteenth-century British literature, as well as courses in women's literature, children's literature (including Fairy Tales and Harry Potter), Shakespeare, and introductory courses to literary studies. She has been nominated for Professor of the Year three times, and honored by Sigma Tau Delta as English Professor of the year. Her scholarly publications include work on eighteenth century women writers like Frances Burney and Catharine Trotter, pedagogy, and Harry Potter.
Project Summary:
Adapting Jane Austen/Adapting to Jane Austen. The grant enables all students in my class to have the use of an iPad for the semester, which will make several projects possible. Students will take full advantage of the interactive, annotated ebook version of Pride and Prejudice published by Anchor Books, which includes maps, videos about 18c culture, and other resources. Students will be able to use the tablets for other course assignments during the term – we will watch multiple movie versions of the novels, which they can find on Amazon, Netflix, or YouTube. Also, we will be watching the vlog series "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries." This highly regarded adaptation will pair well with the adaptation theory we are reading as part of the course. Students will use the filming and editing capabilities of their tablets to create their own micro-adaptations for the course final. For the micro-adaptation, students will work in groups to select what they feel is an essential or representative element of the story (a specific scene, a specific character, etc), and present an adaptation that is limited in format only by their imaginations. They will produce a twenty-minute artifact (film, play, dance, song, etc) which is presented to their classmates as part of the final exam. Their classmates will then write their final exam on their peers' adaptations, utilizing the theories from the class to evaluate one of four possible micro-adaptations. I have been invited to submit an essay on this course to a special collection titled Adapting the Eighteenth-Century: Pedagogies and Practices.
