Serial Readers: First-Year College Students Reimagine Lady Audley’s Secret

Abstract: This article documents teaching the periodical form of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret to 100-level nonmajors. By reading facsimiles of the London Journal ’s 1863 serialization and completing a creative project, students connected Victorian serials with modern mass media. The unit responds to emerging calls to embrace linguistic diversity and undiscipline the classroom by allowing students to use multimedia and modern diction to reimagine Braddon’s dialogue. Through original songs, screenshots summarizing streaming episodes of the installments, and social media exchanges between characters, my culturally diverse undergraduates reinterpreted the original text.