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This module offers students the opportunity to work closely with select Shakespeare plays and to attend to their adaptation in contemporary popular culture and digital media. Informed by current critical debates within Shakespeare studies as well as theories of adaptation, the module will address a range of texts that variously appropriate, cite and reimagine Shakespeare. From novels and plays to film and digital media productions, the module will consider the aesthetics and politics of adaptation. In particular, it will examine how and why Shakespeare ghosts contemporary literary texts, popular culture and social media, ask what it means to adapt a Shakespearean text, or to describe something as “Shakespearean”, and investigate the ideologies that iterations of Shakespeare might serve. To this end, the module asks to what extent Shakespeare functions as a metalanguage for race, gender, and class in our contemporary world. By the end of the elective, students should have an understanding of different theories of and approaches to Shakespeare and a rich appreciation of the forms Shakespeare takes across media. Students will be encouraged to develop a writing journal or online portfolio that details their responses to the texts and to curate
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