Shakespeare and Crisis
| Module title | Shakespeare and Crisis |
|---|---|
| Module code | EAS3502 |
| Academic year | 2024/5 |
| Credits | 30 |
| Module staff | Professor Pascale Aebischer (Convenor) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 11 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 30 |
|---|
Module description
This module explores a choice of fraught cultural contexts in which Shakespeare is both deployed and contested: the AIDS pandemic and subsequent flashpoints regarding gender identity and sexuality, the climate emergency, the decolonisation movement, the COVID-19 pandemic, and crises of migration and national identity. You will learn how several crises often intersect in a single production of Shakespeare and about the particular relationships with Shakespeare that explain the distinctive approaches of critics and creatives from different parts of the world. We will explore why and how Shakespeare is used as a tool to raise awareness, build resilience, and question or reinforce received ideas. We will also think about the limitations of Shakespeare as a progressive force for social justice and climate action.
This module is suitable for students with some prior knowledge of Shakespeare and for interdisciplinary pathways.
Module aims - intentions of the module
The module aims to build on your prior acquaintance with Shakespearean drama and develop your understanding of how Shakespeare, as a cultural icon, is deployed in crisis situations. It also aims to help you understand why Shakespeare’s cultural pre-eminence is increasingly questioned and debated.
The module will equip you with the skills and knowledge to be able to talk and write confidently about the various forms in which Shakespeare is deployed in present-day culture: film, script (edited or adapted), theatrical performance and theatre broadcasts. In addition to this, the module aims to give you the knowledge and confidence to speak about current crises in a way informed by your research, both in writing and orally. You will research contexts and performances with your study group and this will hone your team skills. You will have dedicated tutor-led workshops in which you will learn how to write performance reviews, and you will have the opportunity to experiment with creative adaptation and reflective writing, which will help you widen and/or consolidate the range of your writing style.
The module’s assessment structure, which combines two continuous elements (oral participation and a virtual commonplace book) with a review and a creative adaptation or critical response, aims to build your confidence across the course of the term with a range of bite-sized activities that allow you to develop your own interests and explore both critical and creative ways of responding to Shakespearean drama.
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
ILO: Module-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 1. Demonstrate the ability to make use of contextual material and criticism in your assessment of Shakespearean and Shakespeare-related productions and texts
- 2. Engage critically with, and apply appropriate analytical frameworks to modern stage and screen productions of Shakespeare and Shakespeare-related plays and write reviews of such productions
- 3. Establish connections between specific crisis contexts, the discourses associated with them, and the productions of Shakespearean texts that respond to those contexts.
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 4. Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse dramatic literature and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to the present-day historical context
- 5. Demonstrate an advanced ability to interrelate texts and discourses specific to your own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
- 6. Demonstrate an advanced ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary and film texts as well as online materials.
ILO: Personal and key skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 7. Through seminar work, presentations, or the reflective video essay, demonstrate advanced oral communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups.
- 8. Through entries in the commonplace book and your video essay or critical response, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to use clear and correct prose
- 9. Through research for seminars, commonplace book entries, and presentations, demonstrate advanced proficiency in information retrieval and analysis.
- 10. Through review-writing and the creative adaptation or critical response, demonstrate an advanced capacity to adapt individual writing styles to the requirements of a specific genre and type of publication
Syllabus plan
The module will return repeatedly to three core Shakespearean texts: The Tempest, Hamlet and Othello. It will also explore other Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean texts, including present-day adaptations, keeping the corpus open to be responsive to new developments.
In two to four-week blocks, you will explore at least three of the following contexts, with the final part of the module guided by the interests of the students and the availability of new productions and adaptations:
- Black Lives Matter and the decolonisation movement
- The climate emergency
- The AIDS pandemic and debates regarding gender and sexuality
- The COVID-19 pandemic and the existential crisis of the theatre industry
- Migration and national identity
The final week of the term will be dedicated to sharing and discussing the creative adaptations and critical responses produced by the students, with an opportunity for peer feedback ahead of formal submission.
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 32 | 268 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 23 | Seminars |
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 5 | Context lectures and interviews |
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 4 | Workshops |
| Guided Independent Study | 33 | Performance & film viewing |
| Guided Independent Study | 55 | Study Group work |
| Guided Independent Study | 180 | Reading, independent viewing, research, writing |
Formative assessment
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Review: draft (commonplace book entry) | 500 words | 2-5, 10 | Peer feedback; tutor feedback within the commonplace book |
| Commonplace book entry | 500 words | 1-10 | Tutor feedback within the commonplace book |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 90 | 0 | 10 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual commonplace book | 40 | 3,000 words, in 6 segments of 500 words | 1-10 | Written feedback on two items within the commonplace book |
| Review | 20 | 1,000 words | 2-5, 10 | Written feedback with option of tutorial follow-up |
| Creative adaptation OR Critical response | 30 | 350-700 words of creative adaptation, with 3-minute video essay of reflection Or 2,000 words of critical response | 1-10 | Written feedback with option of tutorial follow-up |
| Module participation | 10 | Continuous assessment | 1-7, 9-10 | Optional oral feedback in tutorial |
| 0 | ||||
| 0 |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual commonplace book | Virtual commonplace book | 1-10 | Referral/deferral period |
| Review | Review | 2-5, 10 | Referral/deferral period |
| Creative adaptation OR Critical response | 350-700 words of creative adaptation, with 3-minute video essay of reflection Or 2,000 words of critical response | 1-10 | Referral/deferral period |
| Module participation | n/a | 1-7, 9-10 | Repeat study/mitigation |
Re-assessment notes
Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.
Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
Basic reading:
Core plays:
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
William Shakespeare, Othello
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Christopher Marlowe, Edward II
Keith Hamilton Cobb, American Moor
Indicative secondary reading:
Pascale Aebischer, Screening Early Modern Drama: Beyond Shakespeare (CUP, 2013) and Viral Shakespeare: Performance in the Time of Pandemic (CUP, 2021).
Gemma Allred, Benjamin Broadribb and Erin Sullivan. Shakespeare in Lockdown (Bloomsbury, 2022).
Vicki Angelacki, Theatre & Environment. (Macmillan, 2019).
Thomas Cartelli, Reenacting Shakespeare in the Shakespeare Aftermath (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Sophie Chiari, Shakespeare’s Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment: The Early Modern ‘Fated Sky’ (Edinburgh University Press, 2019)
Timothy Ryan Day, Shakespeare and the Evolution of the Human Umwelt: Adapt, Interpret, Mutate (Routledge, 2021).
Christy Desmet, Sujata Iyengar, and Miriam Emma Jacobson, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation. Routledge Literature Handbooks. (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.)
Hillary Eklund and Wendy Beth Hyman, eds. Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now (Edinburgh UP, 2019).
Peter Kirwan and Kathryn Prince, eds. The Arden Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance. (Bloomsbury, 2022).
Arthur J. Little, Jr. Shakespeare and Race Theory. (Bloomsbury, 2023).
Joyce Green Macdonald. Shakespearean Adaptation, Race and Memory in the New World. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
Rebecca Laroche and Jennifer Munroe. Shakespeare and Ecofeminist Theory. (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Randall Martin, Shakespeare and Ecology (Oxford, 2020).
Evelyn O’Malley, Weathering Shakespeare: Audiences and Open-Air Performance (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources
Online resources:
Peter Kirwan, The Bardathon Blog: https://drpeterkirwan.com/the-bardathon/
Paul Edmondson et al., Reviewing Shakespeare: http://bloggingshakespeare.com/reviewing-shakespeare/
World Shakespeare Bibliography Online: https://www.worldshakesbib.org/
MIT, Global Shakespeares: https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/
A/S/I/A – Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive: http://a-s-i-a-web.org/index.php
The EarthShakes Alliance: https://earthshakes.ucmerced.edu/resources
ELE – College to provide hyperlink to appropriate pages
| Credit value | 30 |
|---|---|
| Module ECTS | 15 |
| Module pre-requisites | n/a |
| Module co-requisites | n/a |
| NQF level (module) | 6 |
| Available as distance learning? | No |
| Origin date | 16/12/2022 |
| Last revision date | 10/03/2023 |
