Dr. Staci Stone, Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, advocates for students, faculty, and staff to help them succeed through support and innovation. Staci is certified in experiential learning and has more than two decades of administrative and teaching experience. She has received numerous recognitions, including the Michael L. Basile Extraordinary Contribution to Internationalization Award, as well as NEH and Japanese Outreach Initiative grants. Her publications focus on British women writers, summer reading programs, and interdisciplinary teaching. She has taught abroad numerous times, accompanying students to London, Dublin, Prague, and South Korea. Her advanced degrees in English and Gender Studies are from the University of Alabama and the University of South Carolina. She is also a recent graduate of the HERS Leadership Institute.
Encounter vampires, ghosts, murder, magic, and cemeteries--as we explore London’s many sites featured in famous works of Gothic literature and those used in film adaptations of that genre. Critical readings of Bram Stoker, J. K. Rowling, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mary Shelley will inform us of our adventures in Highgate Cemetery, Westminster Abbey, and the Tower of London. We will immerse ourselves in cultural history in such diverse sites as the British Museum and a museum of curiosities and “natural history” as well as a real Gothic cathedral, and we will experience a modern treatment of Gothic themes when taking the Harry Potter Studio Tour.