Course Credits (3)
This course uses theatrical practices to explore issues of social justice in Shakespeare’s tragedies, where the idea of individual voice is developing explosively, around issues of social justice and injustice. Looking at four of Shakespeare’s devastatingly powerful tragedies – Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear – we will explore the ways tragic expression builds self from and against difference and helps us imagine our ways into and out of a punishing world. We will examine how the bounds of privilege are set in these plays and determine who matters, and who does not – both within the dramatic fiction and in the worlds outside. And we will look at how and when individuals gain and lose agency and voice, and to what ends. Working with professional actors, we will use theatrical strategies to ground our emotional experiences and critical interpretations of the plays. For the major seminar project, students will create and perform a 5-minute dramatic monologue, based on the language or character of our plays but/and aiming to bring Shakespeare into the present as a vehicle for building social awareness and social change. At its goal, the seminar will give new and seasoned readers an opportunity to experience Shakespeare plays as living texts: to develop their own critical and creative voices, to assess and address questions of social justice, and to bring Shakespeare into the now. Students will learn not only to, as Lear says, “see better” but also to write better. Readings will include Shakespeare’s Hamlet (“bad quarto” and Folio version), Othello, Macbeth, King Lear; Toni Morrison’s, Desdemona; as well as relevant historical and contextual materials. We will also look at examples of provocative contemporary productions, from theater and film, to get a sense of what staging can do. Writing will include: weekly critical and creative pieces, a 5-minute dramatic monologue, which students will produce in several drafts, with the aim of improving their writing practices as well as their written product.
About Professor Bartels
Professor Bartels is author of Speaking of the Moor: From Alcazar to Othello (2008) and Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation, and Marlowe (1993), which won the Roma Gill Prize for Best Work on Christopher Marlowe, 1993-94. She is co-editor, with Emma Smith (University of Oxford), of Christopher Marlowe in Context (2013) and editor of Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe (1997). Her most recent essays include: “Strange Bedfellows: The Ordinary Undersides of ‘A True Reportory’ and The Tempest,” “Identifying ‘the Dane’: Gender and Race in Hamlet” (2016); and “Julius Caesar: Making history” (2016).