Shakespeare at Warwick
Shakespeare at Warwick
**This module is not available in 2024/25**
Has the study of William Shakespeare lost relevance at a time when questions of decolonising and ‘de-canonizing’ curriculums are taking centre stage? Simply put, are we bored of the Bard? This module will align a selection of Shakespeare’s plays with the most pressing of current critical concerns, from environmental issues to identity politics, cultural responses to pandemics to the challenges of decolonisation. Delivered by one of the most dynamic centres for the study of Shakespeare in the UK, the course will invite students to interrogate the importance and relevance of studying Shakespeare today. Digital archival research will offer an immersive, critical exploration of Elizabethan and Jacobean performance conditions, and the social frameworks of the early-modern period more broadly, out of which these plays were born. Turning to our present moment, we will focus our attention on a selection of his plays to study Shakespeare’s dramatic and literary craft. We will explore how Shakespeare intersects with the most contemporary of debates – from ecocriticism to feminism, representations of bodies and identities, to the challenging question of decolonisation – and ask if, how and why his plays remain relevant today.
Who is this module open to?
Not for credit/ Co-curricular (0 CATS): Open to all degree level students at Warwick.
Credit bearing:
Open to all intermediate level (second year) students at Warwick.
Open to students from partner institutions.
- EN2L5-15 - Intermediate, for 15 CATS credit in current year
Key dates
This module is not available in 2024/25.
Costs
Students will need to bring copies of the set Shakespeare texts into seminar discussion; advice on editions will be provided and copies are widely available in the library.
Location
This module will be taught at the Warwick campus, Coventry.
What's special about our modules?
This programme will challenge your thinking, develop your confidence and open up a world of new opportunities. You’ll consider new ideas, apply theory to real world issues working in teams and individually, and develop new networks, connections and friendships. This will provide you strong analytical and research methods skills which also enhance your employability profile for a globalised world of work, derived from a transformative blend of online learning and intercultural engagement.
Access to Intercultural Training will provide further enhancement of your skills.
The intensive nature of our programme lets you focus purely on your chosen modules.
You should expect around two weeks of daily face-to-face sessions (on location) and possibly one week of preparatory online activities. The aim is to work in groups consisting of incoming students (from partner institutions) and Warwick students during the module. Assessments will consist of a mix of group and individual activities.
There are no additional programme fees for Warwick students to take our modules.
Where will you be taught?
Our intensive modules are taught in various ways: mostly face-to-face (combing some online learning and face-to-face teaching). Modules will be based at Warwick central campus, or our overseas residentials will be based at selected European locations relevant to module content. Our modules are designed to be taught in an intensive way, combining physical teaching, and online activities.
All participants will be expected to attend all lectures and group work activities in real time; this might include some online activities in the prep week (where listed in Key dates). As modules are intensive there is not expected to be free time during the teaching period for you to undertake other activities; there will be limited time available during the teaching period to explore the surrounding area.
Students are responsible for checking their own visa requirements and all associated applications and costs.
For overseas modules students are responsible for identifying and booking their own accommodation.
Dr Stephen Purcell
Stephen Purcell is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies. His research focuses on Shakespeare in contemporary performance and popular culture. His publications include Popular Shakespeare (Palgrave, 2009), Shakespeare and Audience in Practice (Palgrave, 2013), and numerous articles on Shakespeare on stage, television, and film. He has published in Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, and Shakespeare Survey. His most recent book is Shakespeare in the Theatre: Mark Rylance at the Globe (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016). He is Joint Artistic Director of the theatre company The Pantaloons, and frequently leads practice-as-research workshops with the company at conferences and elsewhere.
Dr Ursula Clayton
Dr Ursula Clayton is Teaching Fellow in Shakespeare and Early Modern Studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, and teaches on the English and Comparative Literary Studies program.
Ursula teaches undergraduate modules on Medieval to Renaissance literature, adaptations of Shakespeare, and early modern drama. Ursula also co-convenes the ECLS Department’s ‘Academic Enrichment’ program, which supports students develop their literacy, research, and writing skills.
Ursula’s research considers Shakespearean and early modern conceptions of parasitism, as articulated in scientific, philosophical, and socio-political discourses.
Dr Natalya Din-Kariuki
Natalya Din-Kariuki is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies. She took her BA, MSt, and DPhil degrees at the University of Oxford. From 2016 to 2019, she was Lecturer in English at Worcester College, Oxford, where she taught literature from 1550 to 1830, including Shakespeare, as well as topics in critical theory and contemporary literature.
She has held visiting fellowships at the University of Leeds, the Folger Institute in Washington, DC., and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. Natalya’s research examines the literary and intellectual history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a particular focus on travel writing, transnational and transcultural encounters, modes of cosmopolitanism, and rhetoric and poetics.
Professor Carol Rutter
Carol Rutter is Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies. In 2005 Carol became the first woman in the history of the Department to be promoted to a personal chair in English when she was made Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies.
From 2006-2011 she was Director of the CAPITAL Centre (Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning), a HEFCE-funded Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning that, in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, developed (cross-university and cross-faculty) open-space learning for higher education. Rutter's pioneering 'Shakespeare Without Chairs', which uses rehearsal techniques to conduct 'close reading as three dimensional literary criticism' is now a permanent fixture on the final year English syllabus.
In 2007 she was awarded a WATE (Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence) and in 2011, appointed a National Teaching Fellow. She presided over the transformation of CAPITAL into a university core-funded Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) in 2011. Carol Rutter's major research interests lie in Shakespeare performance studies. She writes about Shakespeare (and his contemporaries) both in early modern and in subsequent performance.
Module aims
- Situate Shakespeare’s plays in their period context, to offer an in-depth, theoretically and historically informed assessment of the plays and their significance
- Introduce students to an emergent body of criticism that conflates Shakespeare with contemporary discussions on identity, the environment, and canonical literature
Outline syllabus
This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.
An Introduction to Antony and Cleopatra
- William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (recommended Arden Shakespeare edition, edited by John Wilders)
- Emma Smith, ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ in This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright (2020)
Early Modern Bodies
- Helkiah Crooke, Mikrokosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man (London, 1615)
- Michael C. Shoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England… (1999)
Gendered Bodies
- Yasmin Arshad, ‘‘She did make defect perfection’: The Paradox and Variety of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra’ in Imagining Cleopatra: Performing Gender and Power in Early Modern England (2019)
- Jennifer Edwards, ‘‘Amorous pinches’: Keeping (in)tact in Antony and Cleopatra’ in Shakespeare / Sense Contemporary Readings in Sensory Culture ed. by Simon Smith (2020)
Racialised Bodies
- Kim Hall, ‘Marriages of State: The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra’ in Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (1995)
- Jyotsna G. Singh (ed.), ‘Chapter One: Historical Contexts 1: Shakespeare and the Colonial’ in Imaginary Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory (2020)
Environed Bodies
- Edward J., Geisweidt, ‘‘The Nobleness of Life’: Spontaneous Generation and Excremental Life in Antony and Cleopatra’, Ecocritical Shakespeare ed. Lynne Bruckner and Dan Brayton (London and New York: Routledge Press, 2011), 89-104
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
- Gained an understanding of key critical and literary concepts in Shakespeare studies, including but not limited to: performance, history, gender, the body, environment, and decolonisation
- Acquired knowledge of relevant cultural and critical contexts within which to situate the set texts
- Developed strategies for reading drama within the context of English history
- Developed archival research skills
- Enhanced writing skills for different specialist audiences
- Developed digital literacy and audio publishing skills
Research element
Use of archives to research relevant topics.
Interdisciplinary
The module is designed to provide the students with an understanding of relationships between the different disciplinary areas within English and Comparative Literature Studies, particularly Shakespeare. It also invites to the students to make connections with other disciplinary areas covered in their main study programme. It provides the students with a critical understanding of dominant traditions and methodologies associated with the main phenomena covered in the module and enables the students to transcend disciplinary boundaries. The interdisciplinary course cohort provides contact opportunities and learning to see from different perspectives is a core aspect of the learning experience.
International
The module draws on cases from different contexts, including different geopolitical areas, professional environments and linguistic contexts. The content and assessment invite the students to reflect on the societal relevance in different environments of the phenomena covered in the module. The assessment involves students working in groups with academic and ideally non-academic stakeholders which (will) allow for a global and local outlook to be built into the module’s work. The international and diverse course cohort provides contact opportunities and learning to see from different perspectives is a core aspect of the learning experience.
Subject specific skills
- Understand and deploy theoretical and methodological positions with regards to Shakespeare and early modern culture
- Place the study of Shakespeare within wider contexts of recent scholarship and understand professional and disciplinary boundaries
- Be able to draw relevant analogies and connections between historically situated themes and ideas and contemporary cultural/political debates
Transferable skills
- Work effectively with others in group tasks and in teams
- Plan and manage time in projects
- Develop strong analytical skills
- Find, evaluate and use previous research at a level appropriate for an intermediate year module
- Use a range of tools and resources effectively in the preparation of course work
- Use appropriate analytic methods to analyse research data on Shakespeare
- Read academic papers effectively in the context of an intensive programme
- Communicate clearly and effectively in discussions
- Communicate ideas effectively in writing.
Study time
| Type | Required |
| Lectures |
6 sessions of 45 minutes (3%) |
| Online learning (scheduled sessions) | 6 sessions of 1 hour (4%) |
| Other activity |
4 hours (3%)
|
| Private study |
135 hours 30 minutes (90%)
|
| Total | 150 hours |
Assessment
You must pass all assessment components to pass the module.
| Weighting | ||
| Podcast | 25% | |
|
Short (20 minute) podcast |
||
| Blog | 25% | |
|
Two blog entries, one each week, of c.500 words |
||
| Final essay |
50% |
|
|
A critical, researched essay based on a set of published questions; students may also devise their own topic in consultation with the tutor |
||
Feedback on assessment
- Written feedback
- Opportunity for one-to-one discussion in office hours
Before you apply
You can take a maximum of two WIISP modules, and cannot take them at the same time.
Please note
- Warwick students will need to check with their department before applying to take a WIISP module
- Students from partner institutions will need to apply via their home institution
- You are expected to fully engage and participate in the module, including in any group activities, if not your registration will be cancelled
- Module details provided on these pages are supplementary to module details in the module catalogueLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window. Subsequently individual module pages (moodle/my.wbs) will provide live details
- All modules require minimum numbers to run. This is set by each module leader.
How to apply
If you want to make an enquiry before applying, please contact the WIISP team at WIISP at warwick dot ac dot uk