Abstract
An aspiration of any English course is to have students use readings and class discussions to shape their understanding of the world. This chapter details a project aimed at more deliberately creating the opportunity for such thoughtfulness, and being more deliberate in having students apply concepts from class readings to real-life concerns. One of the best ways to engage students in applying course concepts is to follow the old adage of “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.” Asking students to “live like a Victorian” in specific ways and journal about their experiences helps them both better understand nineteenth-century living conditions and better understand their own. Through a series of these assignments, students find that living like a Victorian helps us better understand how we live today.
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Cadwallader, J. (2017). Adventures in Living Like a Victorian. In: Cadwallader, J., Mazzeno, L. (eds) Teaching Victorian Literature in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58886-5_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58886-5_18
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