Topic: Language in Play
| Time | Days | Location | Instructor | GER | Credit | OPUS Class Number | Syllabus (Tentative) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2:00pm-2:50pm | MWF | Callaway Center N204 | Hilb, Benjamin. | FWRT. | 4 | 4203 | TBA. |
Content: Playing is one of the most fun things one can do. But it can also be one of the best occasions for question. Participating in and reflecting on a given culture?s traditions of play can yield important and often surprising information about it: how groups are structured, how collective meaning is produced, how authority is assumed, etc.
This course will focus, in its play, on two toys: language and the theater. We will explore, through careful reading and collective performance, plays that consciously make language their plaything in order to ask, and to have fun in asking, how language functions in play. It?s very serious, I assure you. In plays, language is used variously to oppress, to promote, to please, to promise, to seduce, to cure, even to kill. Playwrights to be studied (and understudied in case of illness) will include Shakespeare and Beckett, two prototypically playful English writers.
Texts: Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare); Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, Play, Endgame (Beckett).
Particulars: Three essays, weekly writing assignments, class attendance and participation.
The schedule of courses on O.P.U.S. is the official listing of courses, including days and times they meet and the General Education Requirements they satisfy. Students should use course descriptions as general guidelines. Course requirements, grading details, book lists, and syllabi are subject to change.