I wanted to use a few narrow lenses to focus on and teach the students to view the plays.
I wanted to focus on really unpacking and digging in on the plays we covered, not to rush to cover things.
Here is my syllabus.
The idea was to look at four plays, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Othello, and The Tempest. For each play I would present the students with the lens to view the play through- gender roles, race, colonialism. In week one I would ask them what they thought of those lenses, what their current knowledge and preconceptions were. For week two we would read and discuss the play, first covering comprehension, then analysis. In week three we would read scholarly articles and discuss them. I tried to choose scholars that represented major arguments in the field. I tried to have good representation of Scholars of Color, queer theory, controversies. I have shown the students what these scholars look like. I was lucky enough that #RaceB4Race was this semester, and I shared that as well with them.
I framed Macbeth as the slow walking play. We watched the Patrick Stewart movie version first, then talked about gender roles. I walked them through the comprehension and analysis. I modeled what we would be doing with the other plays. Then we applied gender roles to Twelfth Night.
I have been explicit in my conversations about race and gender roles. I am very thankful to the work of Shakespeare Scholars of Color on Twitter, and especially the SAA15 Modern Race Bibliography. I have shared these things with my students. Their English majors, and I think it's important to have these explicit, clear conversations with them and that they know the field they're going into. Also, I think it's very important they SEE that there are scholars like them out there.
There have been a few things I learned so far this semester:
- Our school does rental textbooks that is covered as part of their tuition, which is cool. BUT it also means that students cannot write in their books which is kinda a big deal for English majors. I encouraged Dover editions, and showed them Folger's Digital Editions, but at this point, decided this was ridonkulous, and I bought them copies of Othello and The Tempest because I think it's important they be able to annotate in their books.
- Many have only covered the No Fear version of Shakespeare so we've spent more time on the language and comprehension.
- I've also had them take pictures of their notes as prep for class to help them see how important that is.
They all seem to like the class, and the set up has worked. I have cut some of the secondary readings, because I rather they have the time to focus on and unpack a single article rather than rush through multiple journal articles.
There were four main assignments, a presentation/project that is a way for them to informally explore a topic they might be interested in, a close reading paper, a response to a scholarly article, and a final paper/project (an unessay). Their intro to research topics were very cool. Next week we'll start on their close reading papers, and we've been doing class activities that focus on that. We've been reading and discussing scholarly articles, so they've also had practice prepping them for the response. Their final paper/project can be any topic, any form, and we'll spend time talking those through, but I encourage them to use one of the lenses that we've studied and use that as the foundation for their project.
The Shakespeare class is currently a required class. I am suggesting that we replace it with an Early Modern Global Texts class. First, because that's the state of the field. Two, I think it is a better fit. And finally, I think the texts will be better.
While I've made adjustments, the frame of the class has worked well. I think it helps a lot to have clear lenses so they know what they're reading for especially with texts they're not familiar with. And like I said, they're enjoying the class and format.
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