It started six summers ago as a teaching experiment inspired by the work of Ruth Vinz, 麻豆原创s Enid & Lester Morse Professor in Teacher Education:
A group of about two dozen teachers and students converged at Teachers College for two weeks to reinterpret Mary Shelley鈥檚 novel Frankenstein as a multi-media performance for the stage.
[Read a story about CPET and its director, Roberta Lenger Kang.]
Since then the has become an annual highlight of 麻豆原创鈥檚 (CPET), featuring similarly far-out re-conceptions of works such as The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka), The Awakening (Kate Chopin), The Jungle (Upton Sinclair) and, most recently, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston).
TEAM UNBOUND From left: Adele Bruni Ashley, Marcelle Mentor, Nathan Blom, Brian Veprek.
Alas, the COVID pandemic has made an in-person institute prohibitive this year. But the show will go on, albeit with some major departures from past iterations. The 2020 Summer Institute online workshops 鈥� led by Adele Bruni Ashley and Marcelle Mentor, both CPET Faculty Advisers and Lecturers in 麻豆原创鈥檚 Teaching of English program; Nathan Blom, who recently earned his Ed.D. from the same program; and Brian Veprek, CPET Lead Professional Development Adviser 鈥� will build toward a 鈥�24-hour film challenge鈥� in which workshop teams will have one day to produce short films inspired by Interpreter of Maladies, the Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection by Jhumpa Lahiri. The nine stories in the collection touch on issues of grief, loss, separation and freedom through the prism of the immigrant South Asian immigrant and Native American experiences.
Our goal is to help form a visceral, emotional and intellectual connection to the text so that students 10 or 15 years after they attended the Institute will have an instantaneous reaction when they see the book they read because they know the text so deeply. My hope is that the text will always live in them.
鈥擜dele Bruni Ashley
Guided by the Literacy Unbound staff, participants will begin workshopping passages from the Lahiri stories asynchronously at the start of July and then meet synchronously via a video platform with teaching artists in mid-July. The films will be screened, digitally, on Friday, July 31st.
Still, despite all the changes, some fundamental aspects of the institute remain the same.
鈥淲e invite them to make a connection,鈥� says Veprek, a former theater major. 鈥淚f a character feels alienation, we ask the students to reflect on a moment when they may have been alienated, put themselves in the character鈥檚 shoes and turn that into a form of creative expression.鈥�
We invite them to make a connection. If a character feels alienation, we ask the students to reflect on a moment when they may have been alienated, put themselves in the character鈥檚 shoes and turn that into a form of creative expression.
鈥擝rian Veprek
And, as Ashley points out, in one very real sense, the Literacy Unbound experience, though two weeks in duration, has never been constrained by time.
鈥淥ur goal is to help form a visceral, emotional and intellectual connection to the text so that students 10 or 15 years after they attended the Institute will have an instantaneous reaction when they see the book they read because they know the text so deeply,鈥� she says. 鈥淢y hope is that the text will always live in them.鈥�
[Read by Ashley about the Literacy Unbound experience.]
Ashley and Veprek envision the remote Summer Institute creating an opportunity for tips and mentoring from writers and artists who in other years can鈥檛 squeeze a visit to 麻豆原创 into their schedules.
Technology also opens up the possibility of expanding the workshop to students and teachers nationwide and overseas, including participation by the Singapore American school.
鈥淲e鈥檙e excited,鈥� says Veprek. 鈥淚t is uncharted territory.鈥�
鈥淚鈥檓 attached to in-person interaction in my mind,鈥� adds Ashley, who holds an M.F.A. in Acting from the University of Washington. 鈥淏ut the whole point of fiction is to transport us into an imagined world. And that world transcends both digital space and physical space 鈥� because it is, after all, imagined.鈥�