ENGL 2221: Shakespeare Seminar: Shakespeare & Film

UDCC/PINS 1000: MENTORING SEMINAR	W. Scott Howard
Section 3: LOOKING FOR SHAKESPEARE	Sturm Hall 387-E
Fall Quarter, 2001	showard@du.edu
Credits: 1.0	x2887
T: 3-4:50; Sturm Hall 133	Office Hours: by appointment

COURSE URL: http://www.du.edu/~showard/UDCC1000.F01.html

BLACKBOARD URL: http://blackboard.du.edu/

"To the Reader"

This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,
Wherein the Graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-doo the life:
O, could he but have drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was ever writ in brasse.
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

—Ben Jonson's commendation of the Droeshout engraving, 1623.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Who was William Shakespeare and what do his plays mean to us in the 21^stcentury? This UDCC seminar will investigate Shakespeare on the page, stage and screen, studying the various ways in which The Bard’s plays are transformed from works of literature into works of culture. The class will begin with close readings of Shakespeare’s original texts with regard to Elizabethan culture and English Renaissance literary traditions. Students will then examine how and why recent film adaptations of those plays offer new cultural narratives that work within and against the discourse of Shakespeare’s world. The course will challenge students to engage in a search for Shakespeare through a variety of activities: in-class (i.e. discussions and dramatic readings); off-campus (i.e. local film screenings and play performances) and the PINS component (as described below). Plays by Shakespeare to be studied include: Richard III, Romeo & Juliet and The Tempest. Films to be investigated include: The British Film Institute’s Silent Shakespeare, Pacino’s: Looking for Richard, Loncraine & McKellen’s Richard III, Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet and Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet. The seminar will also provide individualized advising on academic matters as well as practical introductions to Blackboard and other WWW/Internet resources.

PINS (Partners in Scholarship):
In order to encourage students to investigate how and why Shakespeare has become a cultural icon in this country, this seminar will also require, as part of the graded work in the course, a final research/creative project. This PINS project will merge community-based interviews with library research. During the quarter students will conduct a series of live, recorded interviews with fellow students at DU, everyday people on the streets of Denver and various professionals (e.g. actors and directors, film projectionists, set designers, teachers, writers, etc.) to discover what Shakespeare means to different people. Those recorded conversations will in turn be viewed and discussed during class meetings as students begin their own projects for the course that will combine their interviews with library research. These final projects may be academic or creative (or both) in design.

TEACHING METHOD: Seminar (lecture & discussion)

FILMS: Unless otherwise specified, all students are required to attend screenings of all the films. Locations and times for film showings TBA. Students who do not attend a screening are responsible for watching the film on their own.

METHOD OF EVALUATION & GRADING:
6 short, informal essays (each 1-2 pages): 30%
1 final project: 50%
1 presentation: 10%
Participation & attendance: 10%

Note on essays: Unless otherwise specified, all essays are due at the beginning of class in hard copy form: typed, double-spaced, in 12-point font and with pages stapled. Work submitted late will receive a deduction of -0.5 per day.

Note on plagiarism: Students are expected to submit original work for all assignments. Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will result in an automatic F in the course.

Note on attendance: Students are permitted one unexcused absence from the course during the Quarter. For every additional unexcused absence the student’s overall grade in the class will be diminished by -0.5.

REQUIRED TEXTS:
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard III. Ed. John Jowett. New York: Oxford, 2001. ISBN: 0192839934; $7.95.
---. Romeo & Juliet. Ed. Jill L. Levenson. New York: Oxford, 2000. ISBN: 0192814966; $7.95.
---. The Tempest. Ed. Stephen Orgel. New York: Oxford, 1998. ISBN: 0192834142; $7.95.

PHOTOCOPIES: Selected works in theory and criticism are available at The Penrose Library, reserve desk. The cost for photocopying these materials will be between $5 and $10.

CALENDAR: (subject to change)

Week 1 Shakespeare on the Page, Stage & Screen
T 9/11 Introduction: from Text to Image to Text

Week 2 Looking for Shakespeare in London & New York
T 9/18 Essays due & Shakespeare: Richard III & BFI: Richard III & Pacino: Looking for Richard & Corrigan: A Short Guide to Writing About Film

Week 3 Staging Villainy: from England to Germany
T 9/25 Essays due & Shakespeare: Richard III & Loncraine & McKellen: Richard III & Corrigan: A Short Guide to Writing About Film

Week 4 Looking for Shakespeare in Denver I
T 10/2 Interviews & discussion

Week 5 Looking for Shakespeare in Denver II
T 10/9 Interviews & discussion

Week 6 Looking for Shakespeare in Denver III
T 10/16 Interviews & discussion

Week 7 Looking for Shakespeare in Denver IV
T 10/23 Interviews & discussion

Week 8 Whose Romeo & Juliet?: Shakespeare’s
T 10/30 Essays due & Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet

Week 9 Whose Romeo & Juliet?: Luhrmann’s
T 11/6 Essays due & Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet & Luhrmann: Romeo & Juliet & Corrigan: A Short Guide to Writing About Film & Shakespeare: The Tempest

Week 10 In Other Words/Worlds: The Tempest & Colonialism
T 11/13 Essays due & Shakespeare: The Tempest & BFI: The Tempest & Wilcox: Forbidden Planet

Week 11 Looking for Shakespeare at DU
T 11/20 Final projects due & Presentations

INTERNET & WWW Resources:

Shakespeare:

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: http://tech-two.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html
Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet: http://daphne.palomar.edu/Shakespeare/
Shakespeare's Globe Research Database: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/globe/
Internet Shakespeare Editions: http://web.uvic.ca/shakespeare/index.html
Shakespeare Timeline: http://daphne.palomar.edu/shakespeare/timeline/summarychart.htm
Shakespeare's Life and Times: http://web.uvic.ca/shakespeare/Library/SLT/intro/introsubj.html
The Furness Memorial (Shakespeare) Library: http://www.library.upenn.edu/etext/furness/
The MIT Shakespeare Project: http://www-ceci.mit.edu/projects/shakespeare/ Renaissance & Early Modern Studies: Luminarium: http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm
Renaissance Editions: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ren.htm
Project Gutenberg: http://www.promo.net/pg/
Ficino: FICINO-request@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA
Early Modern Literary Studies: http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/emls/emlshome.html
Seventeenth-Century News: http://www-english.tamu.edu/pubs/scn/
Renaissance Forum: http://www.hull.ac.uk/Hull/EL_Web/renforum/
Explorations in Renaissance Culture: http://www.smsu.edu/english/eirc/eirc.html Conferences: H-Net Discussion Network: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/announce/
UPENN Calls for Papers: http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/ Libraries: Penrose Library: http://www.penlib.du.edu/
Iliff School of Theology: http://www.iliff.edu/
Huntington Library: http://www.huntington.org/
The British Library: http://portico.bl.uk/

Note on copyright and fair-use guidelines:
All image reproductions in this document and the corresponding web pages for this class follow fair-use guidelines. The Library of Congress provides information on copyright at <http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/>. An explanation of the fair-use doctrine may be consulted at <http://fairuse.stanford.edu/>.