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Making Shakespeare: Text, Performance and Adaptation

  • Module code: EL6029
  • Year: 2018/9
  • Level: 6
  • Credits: 30
  • Pre-requisites: Successful completion of level 5 EL or equivalent
  • Co-requisites: None

Summary

This optional Level 6 module allows students to pursue Shakespeare studies at an advanced level and is founded upon a detailed and extensive study of the writer and his works.  Consideration will be given to a range of critical approaches to Shakespeare as well as the long history and dynamic status of Shakespeare in performance and adaptation, for example in relation to questions of gender, identity and globalisation.  Students will be encouraged to reflect upon the role of Shakespeare in culture now as well as relevant contemporary contexts such as the nature of early modern theatregoing alongside crucial political and religious conditions. Teaching on the module will be closely aligned with the rich resources available at the Rose Theatre and in particular will afford students the opportunity to participate in the stimulating series of talks and events organised as part of the Kingston Shakespeare Seminar (KiSS).

Aims

This module aims to:

  • develop critical knowledge of Shakespeare's writings and the history of critical approaches to those writings
  • engage with theoretical frameworks applicable to Shakespeare's writings
  • explore key analytical concepts in relation to Shakespeare's texts, such as subjectivity, authorship, otherness, and identity
  • encourage sophisticated discussion of the changing status of Shakespeare and his writings through history

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module, you will be able to:

  • approach Shakespeare and his writings from a number of sophisticated critical perspectives
  • demonstrate an advanced critical knowledge of a variety of Shakespearean texts
  • appreciate Shakespearean texts within relevant cultural and historical contexts
  • think critically about Shakespeare's place in contemporary culture and via a variety of media and in performance

Curriculum content

  • Shakespeare: page and stage
  • feminist readings of love, gender and sexuality in Shakespeare's works
  • Shakespeare and material culture
  • the politics of adaptation
  • notions of identity and nationhood in Shakespeare's plays
  • Shakespeare and the critical tradition

Teaching and learning strategy

This module is taught by three hour interactive lectures, which will include lecture presentations, workshop activities, student discussions, and film screenings. In all activities, strong emphasis is given to personal engagement and response. In addition to classroom sessions, students will also have the opportunity to attend a number of field trips to relevant exhibitions, theatre productions, and venues such as the Globe and Rose Theatres.

Breakdown of Teaching and Learning Hours

Definitive UNISTATS Category Indicative Description Hours
Scheduled learning and teaching Interactive lectures 66
Guided independent study 234
Total (number of credits x 10) 300

Assessment strategy

Assessment for this module is designed to test students' engagement with the texts studied and their ability to respond to them in a variety of critical and creative forms. Students will be given the opportunity to shape their assessment from a range of available options, suited to their own disciplinary interests and preferred method of engagement.

1)     Completed at the end of teaching block 1:

A critical essay of 2000 words

OR

A 1500 word piece of creative writing with accompanying 500 word critical commentary

OR

A recorded five minute performance with accompanying 500 word critical commentary (30%)

 

2)     Completed at the end of teaching block 2:

A critical essay of 2500 words

OR

A 1500 word piece of creative writing with accompanying 1000 word critical commentary

OR

A recorded five minute performance with accompanying 1000 word critical commentary (50%)

 

3)     20 discussion posts, as recorded via the VLE (20%)

Mapping of Learning Outcomes to Assessment Strategy (Indicative)

Learning Outcome Assessment Strategy
approach Shakespeare and his writings from a number of sophisticated critical perspectives assessed formatively and summatively via flexible assessments and discussion posts
demonstrate an advanced critical knowledge of a variety of Shakespearean texts assessed formatively and summatively via flexible assessments and discussion posts
explore key analytical concepts in relation to Shakespeare's texts, such as subjectivity, authorship, otherness, and identity assessed formatively and summatively via flexible assessments and discussion posts
think critically about Shakespeare's place in contemporary culture and via a variety of media and in performance assessed formatively and summatively via flexible assessments and discussion posts

Elements of Assessment

Description of Assessment Definitive UNISTATS Categories Percentage
Coursework Flexible assessment 30%
Coursework Flexible assessment 50%
Coursework Discussion Posts 20%
Total (to equal 100%) 100%

Achieving a pass

It IS NOT a requirement that any major assessment category is passed separately in order to achieve an overall pass for the module.

Bibliography core texts

The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015.

Bibliography recommended reading

Belsey, Catherine. Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden: The Construction of Family Values in Early Modern Culture (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2001)

Betteridge, Thomas, Shakespearean Fantasy and Politics (Hertford: Hertfordshire University Press, 2004)

Cooper, Tarnya, ed., Searching for Shakespeare (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2006)

D'Amico, Jack. Shakespeare and Italy: The City and the Stage (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001)

Dillon, Janette, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Tragedies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Fineman, Joel. Shakespeare's Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)

Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)

______________. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York: Norton, 2004)

Hadfield, Andrew, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Hadfield, Andrew, and Paul Hammond, eds, Shakespeare and Renaissance Europe

Henderson, Diane, Collaborations with the past : reshaping Shakespeare across time and media (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006)

Howard, Jean E.  Shakespeare Reproduced:  The Text in History and Ideology (London:  Routledge, 2008)

Jed, Stephanie.  Chaste Thinking:  The Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism (Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 1989)

Lamb, Mary Ellen, The Production of Popular Culture in Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson (London: Routledge, 2004)

Lupton, Julia Reinhard and Kenneth Reinhard, After Oedipus:  Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1993)

Lynch, Stephen, Shakespearean intertextuality: studies in selected sources and plays (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998)

Marrapodi, Michele, ed. Shakespeare, Italy, and Intertextuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005)

Sinfield, Alan, Shakespeare, authority, sexuality: unfinished business in cultural materialism (London: Routledge, 2006)

Stern, Tiffany, Making Shakespeare: From Stage to Page (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004)

Wilson, Richard. Shakespeare in French Theory: King of Shadows (Routledge, 2007)

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