Instructor: Leah Whittington
Thursday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: Barker 018
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students
Course Site
William Shakespeare drew on texts from around the world when he wrote plays for the London theater he named “The Globe.” Since Shakespeare’s plays were first performed in early modern England, they have become global texts, adapted and re-fashioned for diverse international audiences. This course investigates key plays by Shakespeare in relation to their multi-cultural sources and their global adaptations. Students will explore how these plays dramatize distinctly early modern approaches to nationality, ethnicity, and cross-culturalism, locating Shakespeare’s works within their own historical moment of cultural transition and change. At the same time, we will study how the plays have been re-interpreted and transformed by contemporary writers, playwrights, actors, and directors from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Asia/Pacific, Latin America, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. How do these contemporary performances negotiate between old and new, local and global, canonicity and cultural plurality? Tracking questions of translation, cosmopolitanism, race, gender, and regional theatrical traditions, we will ask: what can the story of Shakespeare’s worldwide reach tell us about how “global” literature is conceived today?
This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.