“Report Me and My Cause Aright:” Hamlet and the Political Power of Dramatic Narrative
During the final scene of Hamlet, the titular prince makes use of his dying breaths to command two things of Horatio. First, he commands Horatio to affirm that Fortinbras “has his dying voice” (5.2.393) thus giving him legitimacy to take the throne of Denmark. Second, he orders Horatio to tell Fortinbras the story of Hamlet’s
“Bring in The Crows to Peck the Eagles:” Rewriting the Politics of “Coriolanus”
Compared to a number of Shakespeare’s other tragedies, Coriolanus does not frequently enter into the popular consciousness. While T.S. Eliot may have called it Shakespeare’s “[m]ost assured artistic success,” the play has not historically been viewed as one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies. Despite this, the play has long been the subject of critical scrutiny over
“In Troy There Lies the Scene”: Teaching Students to Think about Shakespeare
While teaching Troilus and Cressida this semester, one of the assignments that my students were tasked with was to write an essay on the ways in which the play made visible or commented upon an issue that was facing 16th century England. Students were given a brief lesson on the political and social troubles of
“Popp’d in between th’ election and my hopes:” Using Shakespeare to Understand Contemporary Politics
“Living when he did, Shakespeare could no more be democratic or anti-democratic then he could be a motorist.” -Thomas Marc Parrott, Twenty-Three Plays and Sonnets On October 8th, Stephen Greenblatt wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times which sought to argue that through a detailed close reading of Shakespeare’s Richard III, we
Sharing Space: “Proteus” and the Personal
It seems like academia (or any professional forum, for that matter) encourages us to keep our feelings out of things. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve crossed out passages of student essays this month for being “off topic” or “too praisy,” for bringing in “irrelevant” value judgments on the film they’re writing about.
Appreciating Space: “Minecraft” and Empowerment
For the last two summers, I’ve worked as an instructor for the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Kid College program, which is basically a mix between a summer camp and course series about technology for kids aged 9-14. Most of the classes I taught were about game design, and the most popular courses by far were
Exploring Space: A Walk Among the Gravestones
I suppose it speaks to my interest in the virtual that I wrote a whole post about spatiality last week without moving an inch. On the surface, that doesn’t seem quite in line with the so-called “spatial turn” I mentioned in my last post: the trend in humanities scholarship towards the importance of place and
Imagining Space: America the Virtual
I went on a run today—something I mean to do more often than I actually do, it seems—and my feet took me down a familiar route to Oakwood Cemetery. On my way down the looping paths, I saw a crumpled piece of red and white fabric on the side of the trail. It was a
“Isn’t That All in the Past?”: History and the Privilege of Cultural Amnesia
As I’ve been stressing throughout this month’s series of posts, privilege works in a number of pernicious and insidious ways in our everyday lives. Much as we might collectively like to believe that it doesn’t exist, it is only by dragging it kicking and screaming into the piercing light of day and scholarly/critical inquiry that
“Of Course You Know…”: Deconstructing the Privilege of Knowledge
Some time ago, a colleague of mine was leading discussion in class, and he offhandedly remarked that, of course, we all knew that Aristotle had spoken of the same issue we were discussing in his Nichomachean Ethics. The way in which he made the utterance made it clear that, if we did not, in fact, know this reference, we