Still looking to give yourself the chills even though the weather is warming? The Old Capitol Museum invites you to a special evening of fright as University of Iowa students read selected works by Edgar Allan Poe at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, in the Senate Chamber.
The reading is free and open to the public. Cookies and punch will be available after the reading.
In conjunction with the semester-long exhibit “Poe: A Wilderness of Mirrors,” students in Christine Norquest’s Interpretation of Literature course will provide 19th century entertainment as they present dramatic readings from classics such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, The Oval Portrait, and The Masque of the Red Death.
The evening is the culmination of a semester the students have spent becoming familiar with Poe’s greatest works, researching his life and learning about the society in which he lived. Students have shared their discoveries on the course blog, Mystery in Literature.
The performance is a chance for the students to share more of what they’ve learned from class.
“My goal for them is that as they work with these texts and think about them from a literary standpoint and then use that literary perspective to come up with a way to convey their interpretations to the audience through their reading,” says Norquest, a doctoral candidate in the Department of English.
Norquest, who has taught Interpretation of Literature several times, has partnered with Old Capitol Museum before to create service-learning opportunities for her students. Last Halloween, her students created children’s activities for the Pentacrest Museums’ Creepy Campus Crawl, drawing inspiration from stories such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Dickens’ The Signalman.
She hopes the experience will help students see the important role that literature plays at the UI and in the Iowa City community.
“This isn’t just a place where literature is stuck in the Writers’ Workshop or stuck in the English classrooms,” Norquest says. “It’s a really big part of the community. It’s a chance for the students to get to know their transplanted community a little bit better.”
The Department of English is a unit in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
For more information on “Poe: A Wilderness of Mirrors” and related programming, contact the Old Capitol Museumat 319-335-0546 or visit the website.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in this program, contact the Old Capitol Museum in advance at 319-335-2010.