Hello, all. The time has come! Wednesday is your Symposium, a 45-50 minute conversation/debate run by you.
I will be listening, taking notes, and occasionally intervening to
prompt the group on to the next agenda item (below). I will also give a
response at the end. But I won't be contributing to the discussion
itself. At this point, you don't need me!
Remember,
this is an important event. If you've been participating in conversation
throughout the semester, great: the Symposium is a chance to finish
strong. If you have not been participating, this is an opportunity to do
at least some damage-control. One thing is certain: no one
should let the Symposium go by without contributing. Everyone should
strive to speak at some point or other.
The topic you
guys chose in our last class is "Shakespeare and Gender." Below is a loose agenda to help you prepare for the Symposium and
to assist in guiding you through the discussion. Remember to have this agenda handy at the Symposium itself, either on a smartphone or computer, or printed out.
(1)
You might want to start by generating a list of plays and sonnets that
you feel offer important case studies in Shakespeare's
treatment of gender.
(2) With this raw material in
place, consider this: does Shakespeare seem to have a single,
overarching approach to, or view of, gender? Or does he treat the
subject in different ways at different times without a single conceptual
anchor? (Make reference to specific plays and sonnets, of course.)
(3) Open up the conversation even more now. Having discussed what Shakespeare thinks about gender, consider how Shakespeare thinks with gender.
That is to say, how does the theme of gender allow Shakespeare to raise
questions about other things, such as political hierarchy, law, and
ethics; philosophical questions about agency and selfhood; or theater
itself?
(4) Finally, and taking into consideration
your wide-ranging discussion up to this point, how is Shakespeare's
treatment of gender relevant to our own time? How can we describe this
relationship between the art of the past and the social and political
landscape of the present without being anachronistic and without being insensitive to both the connections and the differences between art and politics?
