- Old Books in New Media

Catalog description

This class will recreate three classic pieces of British literature as twenty-first-century stories told in new media. The class will (1) reimagine the medieval pilgrimage narrative, The Canterbury Tales, as a series of podcasts, (2) map out a contemporary picaresque novel inspired by the eighteenth-century novel Moll Flanders, and (3) rewrite and illustrate the early-twentieth-century poem The Waste Land using generative AI. In each case, teams of 3-4 students will study the form and medium of the old book as well as its historical and cultural context, and then use that knowledge to imagine what a parallel story or poem might be in our own time and in new media forms. In doing so, students will learn how history, culture, form, and media shape imaginative storytelling, and they will become better storytellers themselves. They will also develop teamwork and collaboration skills as they learn to distribute work and hold each other accountable for realizing a shared vision. This course fulfills an oral competency (R) general education requirement, so students will offer several presentations over the course of the semester.