ENL 5227 Summer 2020 Bourus

How many ways are there to study (and to teach) Shakespeare? Rather than focusing on a single play or critical strategy, we will explore what “the great variety of readers” have found in his work, and in particular the approaches to his plays and poems that twenty-first century scholars and critics find most compelling, including feminism, sexuality, media, race, globalization, bodies, performance, film, collaboration, ecocriticism, and neo-formalism (style). Although we’ll introduce all these practices, you’ll be able to drill down into whichever interests you most, so that you can teach Shakespeare (even if it’s just one play in a literature or drama course).

Required Texts: The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition (which will also give you online access to all other parts of the project); Shakespeare in Our Time: A Shakespeare Association of America Collection, ed. Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett (2016).