Time, Day, and Place: 5 p.m. Thursday, Cherry Hall l8

Instructor: Dr. Elizabeth Oakes

Texts: We will read Hamlet, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well, The Winter's Tale, and Henry V for a range of genres.

Aims and Organization: A revolution has taken place in teaching Shakespeare in the last ten years or so at the university level. Thus, we will be exploring, analyzing, interpreting, questioning, and experiencing these plays in various ways. There will be some traditional lecture, but we will also discuss, perform, "textcrawl," answer questions with questions (which is actually what Shakespeare is all about), and develop our own techniques. Some of these may seem strange to you; some may make you uncomfortable; some may even be fun! In essence, I see myself as a guide and a coordinator. I will share my background in Shakespeare with you, and I will learn from you. Bring an open mind.

My primary goal in this class is to aid students in becoming familiar with and reacting to these plays. I want the class members to grasp the body of scholarly knowledge on the plays, explore their own original ideas, and learn to interrogate both of these. I also discuss some of the choices that may be made in producing Shakespeare on the stage, using some live (if possible) and filmed productions as examples. We will also briefly consider Shakespeare as a current phenomenon in mass culture. Most of all, I want to communicate to the class the intellectual excitement that characterizes the field of Shakespeare studies at this time.

Assignments and Written Work: There are two take-home exams, one paper, an oral and written report on a critical article, and a reading exam on each play. For the paper, we will conduct research as a class into a current "hot" topic or play (I'm thinking about A Midsummer Night's Dream at this point), with each student reporting to the class on a critical essay. After group discussion and group research, then, students write their papers on their own.

Scholarly Materials: To acquaint students with Shakespearean scholarship, I provide a handout outlining the critical history of the plays in general and Hamlet in particular. Students will also be required to purchase the set of critical essays that comprises our research.

For more information, contact me at elizabeth.oakes@wku.edu. I have two offices, one in l29 Cherry Hall and one in 134A Cherry Hall, and my WKU numbers are 3634 and 5720.