Many of Shakespeare’s plays explore concerns about “faking it”: the anxious feeling people have about the authenticity of their social interactions. This course will examine three of Shakespeare’s plays (a comedy, a tragedy, and a history) through the lenses of authenticity and identity.   Students will learn to formulate and defend their points of view via…

Mass incarceration, police brutality, torture, and botched executions raise questions about the violence of the law: Must the law be violent to control violence? Does the law’s violence promote justice or disrupt it? How are law and punishment portrayed in literature, media, and art? We will analyze theory, literature, and visual imagery of the law’s violence ranging from…

“Springes to catch woodcocks…”  This course will examine three of Shakespeare’s plays (a comedy, a tragedy, and a history) through the lens of authenticity and identity. Shakespeare lived in a time when it was crucial to put forth the right image in order to profit socially, politically, and materially, so late Elizabethans and early Stuarts…