Fascinated by contemporary fiction and graphic novels set in the long 19th century? Love watching TV shows and films that deal with the Victorian era? Curious about the ways in which imaginary as well as real Victorians, such as Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Jack the Ripper, Jane Eyre and Ada Lovelace, get adapted on page and screen? Interested in learning more about the Victorian period and the way it gets used and abused in contemporary media? Then Neo-Victorianism is the elective course for you. 

This course aims to give an insight into the development and spread of Neo-Victorianism, roughly defined as the use of elements of Victorian literature and culture in contemporary Anglophone literatures and cultures. It offers an insight into theoretical debates about Neo-Victorianism as a concept on the one hand and as an object of study on the other. It critically analyzes the use of aesthetic and ideological elements of the Victorian era in neo-Victorian literature and audio/visual forms. It aims to raise the students' awareness of the role played by cultural nostalgia in the production of Neo-Victorianism, and to make them understand various links between Neo-Victorianism and postcolonial, postfeminist and postmodern approaches to the literary text. Last but not least, the course examines the transmedial nature of the Neo-Victorian adaptations of the Victorian era.