Adapting, Appropriating, Writing

Abstract

This chapter proposes a deeper integration of the writing practices like creative writing and storytelling in a class of literature in order to develop a new pedagogical model that empowers the students of literature to not only read and interpret but also to express and engage with the text in a nuanced manner. It does so in the context of the current trends of interactive reading and writing fostered by the digital technology where productive engagements with the texts through fanfictions, visual adaptations, and so on are a part reading a text. Following the paradigm of fanfiction, the project “The Crucible on Twitter” implemented in the classrooms of English Literature in a Malaysian University revealed the ways in which digitally mediated writing activities enable the learners to engage with a text on its own turf, promoting cross-cultural understanding and empowering the learner-readers to integrate their own meanings, concerns, and issues into their reading of an original literary text.