Jane Austen is an icon. Her novels, first published in England in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, have inspired legions of contemporary readers and fans. Her characters – Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot, and Emma Woodhouse – despite their age, still resonate with many readers today. The list of films and miniseries adapted from her novels or inspired by her plots is long. And contemporary writers, most notably Karen Tei Yamashita in Sansei and Sensibility: Stories (2020), have felt motivated to reimagine Austen’s work. In Yamashita’s collection, each story is inspired by one of Austen’s novels and uses its plot and characters. But, as the title suggests, Yamashita tells the stories of third-generation Japanese Americans living in the aftermath of the internment experience. Like Austen, Yamashita carefully traces the social dynamics within the world that formed her. The shape of the modern novel owes a great deal to Austen, who is among the first writers in the English language to create stories devoted to exploring the customs, values, and politics of the everyday domestic sphere. We will pay attention to how Austen and Yamashita explore the sexual, racial, and political dynamics of their societies. In addition to reading one or two Jane Austen novels and some of the stories from Karen Tei Yamashita’s Sansei and Sensibility, we will watch a few of the numerous film adaptations and modernizations based on Austen’s work, such as Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995), Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice (2005), Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice (2004), and Andrew Ahn’s Fire Island (2022).Historical Topics courses are designed for Writing and Literature Majors and Minors and are focused on the critical investigation of a specific historical topic, movement, style, or tradition of literary and performative production, typically before the year 1900. Students will read and write critically on these topics, including multi-modal responses, and will position the texts within a socio-historical context.

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