Mar 28, 2024  
2022-2023 Academic Catalog 
    
2022-2023 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

ENG 121-01 & 02 - Introduction to Shakespeare

4 credits (Fall and Spring)
The Globe’s Shakespeare. Everyone’s heard of Shakespeare’s Globe, the theater he wrote for: the name already tells you a lot about how he thought about the plays being performed there and what they could do. Four hundred years later, the names are reversed: Shakespeare now belongs to the globe, with his plays produced and adapted in virtually every corner of our world. Yet that dissemination raises important questions, which this class will take up. To what extent are reproductions and inspired works meant to convey the “real” Shakespeare, and to what extent is “Shakespeare” a kind of language other cultures can use to tell their own stories? Do we learn about the past or the present in studying Shakespeare, and how does his global reception change that question? We will read five pairs of plays with contemporary works adapting or inspired by them, from around the world. Our goal is to investigate the plays for what they can tell us about what the “globe” meant in Shakespeare’s day and our own, and the ways this increasingly-important concept is inflected by gender, race, nation, language, and medium. Students will write a midterm and a final paper, as well as several short writing assignments. 

Prerequisite: None.
Note: Fall - section - 01
Spring - sections 01 & 02
Instructor: Likert