17387a

HS-Negotiating Gender: Gender in Contemporary Shakespeare Productions and Adaptions

Sabine Schülting

Kommentar

Do Shakespeare’s love stories still matter to us? May they offer a contribution to current debates about gender and sexuality? (How) can his heroes and heroines be transposed into our time? Can Shakespeare be ‘queered’? Do contemporary adaptations revise traditional stereotypes about gender and race? – With a focus on these and related questions, the seminar will explore the actualization, revision, and/or transformation of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare productions and adaptations. Students will be introduced to relevant studies in the field of Shakespeare and adaptation. On this basis, we will develop approaches to analysing gender and sexuality in a variety of Shakespeare adaptations in different media (literature, film, stage, social media). In the first weeks of the semester, we will explore some avenues of research and discuss adaptations and rewritings of The Tempest, including the screen adaptation by Julie Taymor (2010), Margaret Atwood’s novelization Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold (2016), and (scenes from) the productions by the RSC (2016) and Shakespeare’s Globe (2013). In the second half of the semester students will develop their own research projects, in small groups or individually, and present them in a course conference at the end of the semester.

Students interested in this course should consider pairing it with the tutorial on “Shakespeare and Feminism/Gender” (17 388).

Texts: Students should have read William Shakespeare’s The Tempest by the beginning of the semester (recommended editions: The Arden Shakespeare, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, or The Norton Shakespeare). They should also purchase and read Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed (2016); the paperback edition can be ordered at local bookshops. Further texts will be available on Blackboard.

Assessment: Students are expected to attend regularly and participate actively in all classroom activities. This will include work on a small research project to be presented at the end of the semester. Suggestions for possible projects will be made in class but students may also choose their own topic from the vast field of (global) Shakespeare productions and adaptations. The projects will be presented as either traditional conference papers (of c. 20 mins) or poster presentations.

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