Graduate Seminar, Spring 2012: Shakespeare Dwelling
Drawing by Jenny Tobias, after Lars von Trier, Melancholia
E210: Shakespeare / Dwelling
Wednesdays 9-12
Julia Reinhard Lupton
This course will examine the late plays of Shakespeare in relation to themes and modes of dwelling, including the places of habitation and transit imagined by the plays (from courts and palaces to caves and desert islands); the spaces of playing occupied by Shakespearean drama (public theaters, private theaters, court theaters, and post-Shakespearean scenography); and the diverse environments that surround, saturate and subsume formal edifices (cityscapes; forests, fields, and pastureland; oceans and waterways; air, atmosphere and weather; sound and light; media networks). Our readings of Shakespeare will engage various strands in contemporary criticism, including ecocriticsm, design and architecture studies, object-oriented ontology, and actor-network theory.
We will read Lear, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Pericles, and Cymbeline. Additional readings will be drawn from contemporary place-making, affordance theory, and landscape architecture in works by James Gibson, Geoff Manaugh, Charlie Hailey, Diana Balmori, and Ann Klingmann; plus literary criticism by Julian Yates, Russ McDonald, Susan Fraiman, Charles Frey, and others. This course is addressed both to students with a strong field interest in Shakespeare and Renaissance Studies and to students working in drama, critical theory, and contemporary designed environments.
The seminar coincides with the Group for the Study of Early Culture’s Graduate Conference, Commons (key note by Julian Yates)
as well as Wellek Lectures by Bruno Latour, May 14-20, 2012
Week I: King Lear: Transits through Romance Space
Please read King Lear for the first day of class and glance through the essays in the Norton Critical Edition. King Lear will form a kind of base line for our discussion of the late plays.
Week II: The Winter’s Tale (a): Psychotic Fabrications
Acts I-III; plus essays by Russ McDonald and Charles Frey on Shakespeare’s late style; Julia Lupton on “Hospitality and Risk in The Winter’s Tale.”
Week III: The Winter’s Tale (b): Pastoral Landscapes and Sculptural Niches
Acts IV-V; Charlie Hailey on camping; Geoff Manaugh on instant architecture; Pine and Gilmore on the experience economy.
Week IV: The Tempest (a): Shipwreck with Spectator
Acts I-III; plus Hans Blumenberg, “Shipwreck with Spectator” and James J. Gibson on affordances.
Week V: The Tempest (b): Masque or Anti-Masque?
Acts IV-V; plus Aby Warburg on pageants; Adolphe Appiah on modernist scenography. Jonson-Jones debate on masquing.
Week VI: Cymbeline: The Res Publica of Furniture
Acts I-III; Bruno Latour, “Making Things Public”
Week VII: Cymbeline: Cave Dwellers
Acts IV-V; Diane Balmori, Manifesto for Landscape Architecture
Week VIII: Pericles
Acts I-II
Week IX: Pericles
Acts IV-V
Week X: Catch-up, clean-up, recap
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