Project Description
The Jane Austen in Community project aims to place Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey in two different kinds of communities. 
First, it aims to contextualize the novel in the early 19th century and display how Austen engaged with the literary, social, and political communities of her time. Second, the project brings that contextualized information to the present-day community in the form of public reading groups. During the summer of 2017, two reading groups, representing over 30 community members, utilized the materials created and made available on a public website to inform their multi-session guided reading of the novel. The website offers historical context, reading guides and lesson plans. Three CURI student researchers conducted the research, created the site, and helped facilitate the discussions.
Bridget Draxler has been developing Austen-themed public digital humanities projects since 2009. She participated in the NEH seminar “Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries” in 2012, was a research fellow at Chawton House Library in 2011, and co-edited a 2014 special issue of Persuasions On-Line about teaching Austen, to which she contributed an article on using archival research and digital tools in the undergraduate classroom to teach Austen. Her interest in the public digital humanities stems from experiences as a HASTAC Scholar, a PAGE Fellow for Imagining America, and a graduate fellow in the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy.
Below is an example of they type of interpretive materials made available on the website.
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