This new undergraduate course, developed over the past five years, provides an introduction to transcultural perspectives and to theories of literary adaptation through the lens of storyworlds. A storyworld is defined as an ever expanding and changing fictional realm in which stories are adapted and agglomerate over time and space in different media, cultures, and languages around a set of well-known and familiar central events, characters, images, and themes. One example of a storyworld is the King Arthur tradition, whose stories have been ongoing for a thousand years. This definition of storyworld focuses on artistic creation in writing, art, performance, the moving image, and participatory media. It builds on the fundamental insight that making, changing, and sharing a story is and has always been a fundamental way in which human beings create and share meaning in all spheres of life and culture. Students focus their inquiry on a storyworld of their choice within transcultural and transhistorical contexts.
Storyworlds
Vikings
This online course approaches the Viking age using three different perspectives or lenses: the lens of scientific approaches of history, philology, and archaeology; the lens of the Icelandic family sagas, which were written in the thirteenth-century Iceland about events that happened in the Viking age and uniquely provide a medieval perspective on the Viking past; and the lens of modern popular culture, where Vikings have an enduring presence. Each of these lenses makes sense of the Viking past differently. Looking at the past through these shifting lenses asks students to apply, analyze, and compare approaches, methods, and standards around the ways each perspective creates and shapes knowledge of the Viking Age. Demonstrating that best practices from face-to-face teaching can be adapted to the online learning environment, this course requires students to read sources, write short papers, and participate in discussions.
Palmesel
In February 2014, I gave a lecture in the “Delve Deeper” series sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (Continuing Studies, Duke University). My lecture, “Christ on a Donkey: Performance and Spectacle in Medieval German Cities,” explained the historical and religious context for a medieval bust of Christ owned by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, which is widely believed to be a fragment of a Palmesel (Palm Sunday Donkey). During the Middle Ages these sculptures of Christ seated on a donkey were widely used in Palm Sunday processions.
Waterways: Rivers and Ships in Viking Times
What better topic for a lecture on a Duke University alumni cruise on the waterways of Northern Europe than the deep past of Europe’s riverine and oceanic highways, including a discussion of the many kinds of vessels used by the Norse to master the inhospitable environments of the North Atlantic?
In other words, mermaids in medieval legend and art, which was the topic of another lecture on a Duke University alumni cruise in 2014.