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Course Info for ENGL - 482 - 01, Spring 2023
Class number: 3017 Title: Shakespeare's Other Race Plays Department: English
Career: Undergraduate Component: Seminar Session: Regular
Instructor's Permission Required: No Grading Basis: Regular Units: 1.00
Enrollment limited to 5 Current enrollment: 6 Available seats: 0
Start date: Wednesday, January 25, 2023 End date: Friday, May 12, 2023 Mode of Instruction: In Person
Schedule: T: 6:30PM-9:00PM, 115V - 106 Instructor(s): Brown, David
Prerequisite(s): None
Distribution Requirement: Meets Humanities Requirement
Note: For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written before 1700.
Course Description:
What are Shakespeare's other "race plays"? Why have there only been five go-to Shakespeare plays for discussions about race for so long? Using early modern critical race studies and Black feminism as guides, this course looks beyond the five "race plays"-Titus Andronicus, Othello, Merchant of Venice, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Shakespeare plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet, texts lacking central Black, African, or Jewish figures, also permit generative discussions about race-in particular, whiteness. In this course, we will examine some of Shakespeare's other race plays in search of new racial knowledge while we discuss such topics as gender, sexuality, social class, family and more.