Dartmouth English Class Featured in "Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies"

In Summer 2020 the students in ENGL 52.18 "Netflix and the Serial Novel" worked collaboratively on serial novellas inspired by their class reading and their remote learning environment. With help from Dartmouth's Book Arts Workshop, students worked collaboratively to create a serialized novella. One such project was Self Checkout: a story about a young woman who schemes to steal two COVID-19 vaccines for her family after her mother loses her position at a university. The novella was written by Dartmouth students Rachel Quist, Grace Scott, Ryan McCann, Arjun Srinivasan, and edited by Vanessa Mauricio, Jacob Philhower, and Tara Krumenacker. Students wrote chapters in weekly installments and Sarah Smith, the Book Arts Workshop's manager, printed and mailed out the installments to the class. Once the novellas were completed, Sarah mailed out materials, like bone folders and glue sticks, and taught the students—via Zoom—how to bind their novellas. In her article, Harner writes about how she wanted, "students to see the formal innovations and social debates of the Victorian period, in Christina Sharpe's words, as a 'past that is not past.'" You can read more about the project at the journal Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies.