Misty Krueger

In the summer of 2012, I took part in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) seminar on Jane Austen and her contemporaries.  As a result of this seminar, I devised a few pedagogical and research projects on Jane Austen. I collaborated with Bridget Draxler and proposed a special issue on the teaching of Austen in undergraduate curriculum. Bridget and I co-edited the spring 2014 issue of Persuasions On-Line, the online Austen journal sponsored by the Jane Austen Society of North America, with journal editor, Susan Allen Ford. We wrote an editor's note to introduce the issue, and we each published an essay in the issue along with other NEH seminar colleagues.

 

My essay on teaching Northanger Abbey examines the novel as a “crossover” text that defies strict periodization and can be used in different literature courses to explore different facets of Austen's writing. My article assesses how Austen’s novel spans two literary periods and is influenced by generic modes and literary motifs from those periods. I explain how I teach Austen as an 18th-century writer, a Romantic writer, and as a woman writer whose career demonstrates a youthful affinity for parody while at the same time a mature author's revision of a novel that never saw publication in her lifetime. I conclude by examining the productivity of teaching a single novel in multiple courses at a small liberal arts university where oftentimes students will take multiple classes with a professor. The benefits for the instructor and the student amount to a reconceptualizing the novel in varying literary contexts as well as an ability to interrogate literary periodization, itself.

 

I began work on another project during my time at the NEH seminar. This project was inspired by my research on Popish Plot era pamphlets from the late 1670s housed in The University of Missouri's special collections library, in addition to my examination of documents related to revenge that can be found in The University of Kansas' special collections library. In combining my research interests in revenge with Jane Austen, I reread Austen’s History of England as a vindication pamphlet. 

 

In my essay in The Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation, I explain how Austen’s History functions as a vindication of the Stuart monarchs.  I argue why it is useful to examine this piece of the juvenilia through the genre of vindication, an established genre that defends in print those who have been wronged in print. Austen was not alone in writing vindications in the 18th century. She borrows from history in defending the Stuarts, particularly Mary, Queen of Scots and Charles I, against the writers who have defamed them. In developing my argument for Austen’s History of England as a vindication, I read transcriptions of her marginalia written in the family’s copy of Oliver Goldsmith’s History of England. Written very likely before Austen’s own History, these notations show Austen defending Charles I, Charles II, and the remainder of the Stuart heirs against Cromwell and other naysayers, including anti-Jacobites. A combined reading of the marginalia and the History of England build a compelling case for studying Austen’s History as a document that represents something more than parody.

 

My interests in drama and Jane Austen also led me write about incorporating readers theater into literature pedagogy. In an essay in Aphra Behn Online, I explain the positive results of teaching and then staging Elizabeth Inchbald’s 1798 play, Lovers’ Vows, in a senior seminar on Jane Austen. I make a case for asking students to read Lovers’ Vows and examine its staging and publication history before reading Austen’s 1814 novel, Mansfield Park—the novel in which Austen’s characters intend to stage this play. I also explain the benefits of allowing students to put on a readers theater performance of the play. This activity, I argue, helps students better understand the play, and even the novel, while it encourages students to appreciate the experience of bringing literature to life in the classroom.

 

My work on adaptation, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Samuel Richardson, and Wiliam Shakespeare  explores how assinging a creative writing assignment in a literature course asks students to closely study a work of literature, address the nuances of intertextuality, and produce multimodal and digital adaptations that celebrate the joys of fan fiction. Two published essays on these topics  were inspired by student work produced in my special topics course on adaptations of 17th- through 19th-century British literature.

 

My latest Austen-related work examine Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. I have written two essays about this novel--one on Sea Monsters and comedy, and another on teaching Sea Monsters. These essays are forthcoming in book collections.

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I have presented a conference paper on Jane Austen's juvenilia and digital media. As a result of working with students in a summer class on Austen, I created a website that contains predominantly their writing and images related to Austen and her works. I also worked with students in making digital annotations of Northanger Abbey. It is my hope to write an article on these items. 

 

I am currently at work formulating a book-length project on Austen's juvenilia. To begin my archival research, I will spend 6 weeks in England during the summer of 2017. I will hold the position of the Jane Austen Society of North American International Visitor, and conduct research in the Chawton House Library and Hampshire Records Office.