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Dec 03, 2024
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2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog
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US 226 Shakespeare on Stage, Page and Screen in 21st Century
This University Seminar asks the questions: Why do we still read and perform Shakespeare? How can these centuries-old play texts, written in a style of English that we no longer speak, still be meaningful for us today? This course seeks to answer these questions by approaching Shakespeare from three distinct perspectives: Shakespeare in performance, Shakespeare as literature, and Shakespeare as film. Using a combination of methodologies and approaches, this course fosters a fuller appreciation for how Shakespearean texts written for an Early Modern audience might resonate with present-day American cultural sensibilities. Students examine how aspects of performance, cinematic imagination, and literary analysis can work together to create urgent and relevant meanings for modern audiences. Particular attention is paid to the study of visual imagery associated with Shakespeare, including the examination of visual evidence from Elizabethan/Jacobean England and the analysis of how scenic, lighting, and costuming choices can communicate meaning in contemporary film and performance contexts. Students also work actively with the play texts in class, “on our feet,” to acquire a physical and kinesthetic sense of how live performance helps condition and contributes toward our understanding of a dramatic text.
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