SrSem:ShakespeareWhat You Will

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Senior Seminar: Shakespeare, or What You Will Senior seminars offer senior English majors the opportunity to pursue a topic of their own choosing that reflects their intellectual and/or creative preoccupations. In this course, Shakespeare, or What You Will, students will collaborate with the instructor not only on the development of their own projects, but also on the content of the course, which is open to a wide range of Shakespeare-related topics. Participants will meet with the instructor at the beginning of the semester to select a Shakespeare text and an area of interest. Some possible topics include: literary or popular re-writings of Shakespeare’s plays, including the student's creative adaptation of a Shakespeare play or poem, Shakespeare in performance, Shakespeare in film, editing Shakespeare, digital Shakespeare, theoretical approaches to Shakespeare (genre, race, gender, queer, disability, historicist, psychoanalytic, material culture, religion, animal studies, eco-critical, etc.), global/translation of Shakespeare, etc. We will begin the semester by reading a play and considering it from the perspectives of literary criticism, theater history/performance, and adaptation. In the course of the semester, students will learn research skills from a library instruction, develop an annotated bibliography, select a reading deriving from their research interests to place on the syllabus, make presentations of their project in class, and produce a substantial final essay/adaptation on a topic of their own devising.