Topic: Shakespeare: Page and Screen

TimeDaysLocationInstructorGERCreditOPUS Class NumberSyllabus (Tentative)
2:30pm-3:45pm
7:00pm-9:30pm
TuTh
W
White Hall 111
White Hall 110
Richard Rambuss. HAPW. 42711 TBA.

January 12, 2011- April 25, 2011

Crosslisted: ENG311-001.

Catalog Description: Prerequisite: FILM 270 or consent of instructor. Individual topics on film study focusing on a specific period (e.g., primitive era, transition to sound, post-World War II) or national movement (e.g., Italian neorealism, the nouvelle vague, das neue Kino, Latin American militant cinema). Weekly out-of-class screenings required.

Semester Details:

Shakespeare’s plays can be experienced as live theatrical performances on the stage, read as texts on the page, and viewed as movies on the small or big screen. This course is about the second and the third of these modes of Shakespeare consumption.  

More than once it has been said that Shakespeare, were he alive today, would be working in Hollywood.  “Shakespeare: Page and Screen” will move back and forth between straightforward adaptations of the plays and more revisionary cinematic uses of them. That is, we will ultimately be less concerned with the Shakespeare film per se and more with surveying the ways in which “Shakespeare”—his plots, his characters, his generic tropes, his adages, his name, and its cultural authority—circulates through varieties of movie genres, including lowbrow ones.

Likely pairings of plays and films include: The Taming of the Shrew and Ten Things I Hate About You (dir. Gil Junger;1999); The Merchant of Venice and The Merchant of Venice (dir. Michael Radford; 2004); A Midsummer Night’s Dream andPorky’s 2 (dir. Bob Clark; 1986); Twelfth Night and She’s the Man (dir. Andy Fickman; 2006); Othello  and O (dir. Tim Blake Nelson; 2001); and Henry IV , Pts. 1-2 and My Own Private Idaho (dir. Gus Van Sant; 1991).

Particulars:  Attendance at all classes and screenings; several papers; final exam.

Required Textbooks, Articles, and Resources

  1. Orgel, ed., Stephen. 2002. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare.
    ISBN: 9780141000589.
  2. Hindle, Maurice. 2007. Studying Shakespeare On Film.
    ISBN: 9781403906724.

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.