Two challenges. Number one: a literary scholar of the long British eighteenth century—with particular expertise in gender theory and intersectionality, women's writing, the novel, and film adaptations—wants to keep teaching those subjects in an era of dwindling English majors. Number two: said liter- ary scholar has opted into teaching a new core-curriculum seminar designed specifically for first-year students that has a multitude of student learning objectives. The course “commandments”: choose any focus you like, but you must address the common learning goals that include helping students to read challenging texts, acquire research skills, critically assess the issue of “the greater good” from multiple (interdisciplinary) perspectives, develop strong mentoring relationships, begin to identify their vocations, and succeed at college. The solution: take a shot at harnessing adaptation theory and the fan culture surrounding the richly complex and wildly popular Broadway musical Hamilton. Close study of the musical presents opportunities to teach students research methods and best practices for college success, as well as to explore challenging eighteenth-century source texts, modern issues of creative adaptation and appropriation, and the human rights paradoxes enacted during the founding of our country that remain ongoing, urgent issues in American society.

Because I am a specialist in eighteenth-century Britain, Hamilton's context is a bit out of my comfort zone. Despite being a product of a good public school system and having vivid memories of mindlessly marching around in the mid-winter Michigan sludge for my role as a Continental Army soldier in a fourth-grade enactment of the encampment at Valley Forge, colonial America is not my area of expertise. I have twice taught the first-year semi- nar course with a focus on “Adapting Jane Austen,” which students deemed too challenging, citing the reading load in particular. But how could I teach only one Jane Austen novel? Which of the works in the revered Austen canon would go to the guillotine? In a Hamilton course, I feel no compulsion toward “coverage.” Indeed, despite the title, the course devotes very little time to Alexander Hamilton himself. Nevertheless, the topic provides myriad ways to introduce students to transatlantic eighteenth-century content, the “chal- lenging texts” I am trained to read and teach.