Seminar Work

Participation Although I will give brief informational lectures, I plan on operating this class as a seminar the vast majority of the time.  “Seminar” comes from the Latin word meaning “seed bed,” as in, a place for scholars and their ideas to grow.  The success of this class is heavily dependent, therefore, on the contributions you make to our weekly meetings.  You should come prepared to each class to speak and share interpretations, criticisms, ask questions, and respond to your classmates’ commentary.

Seminar Starter Working with another student, you will begin our discussion for one of our seminar meetings with a video you create of about 10 minutes in length. You can make this video as simple as you’d like (i.e., it can be just you and your partner talking) or you can be creative and use your video creation skills to impress your classmates!

Video Guidelines. From the materials we will be discussing, as well as any additional research you have done (optional), you will prepare an organized presentation of about ten minutes and record it using Panopto, Zoom, or video-recording software of your choice. You can approach this content in any way you’d like, but here are some good ideas for things you might include (depending on the nature of your topic):

• Give relevant historical facts and narratives related to your topic.
• Offer a summary of key claims from the critical reading for that week.
• Give some context of the broader scholarly debates your criticism is participating in (Ecocriticism in Literature, for instance, or Race Studies).
• Give the class a broad overview of the topic, as well as specific examples to illustrate your ideas.
• Show how the historical background materials you are presenting are relevant to the topic.
• Ask some questions that might generate discussion about the historical materials and their relationship to the topic. Remember that it is your job to be the “starter” for conversation in our class!

Most Perhaps most importantly, think of all the boring history lectures you have ever sat through and do everything you can to avoid replicating them! Make your materials interesting—bring them to life for your classmates and instructor.

Your grade for the project will be based on the quality of your content and interest of your presentation.

Here are some examples of what these presentations can look like (with thanks to Prof. Kurt Schreyer and his students)

A YouTube video on Milais’s 1852 painting of Ophelia

A Voicethread presentation on Branagh’s 1996 Hamlet film

Tips for Presentations

1. Remember what Polonius teaches us: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” No one has ever complained that a presentation was too short. When you are planning a presentation, try to focus on two or three main ideas you want your audience to take away from your presentation. Spend your time explaining and developing those two or three points. It is usually not necessary to tell your audience everything about a topic, that’s why you include a bibliography.
2. Show Pictures! One way to think of a presentation—and I’m serious about this—is as a sophisticated, grown-up show-and-tell. People like visual aids to break the monotony of an oral presentation. As much as you can, use visual aids (and not just text typed on a PowerPoint slide) to stimulate your audience’s interest.
3. Have a structure and tell your audience about it. It’s always a good idea to give your audience a general outline and give signposts along the way. You don’t have to get ridiculous about this, but if you have three main points you are going to talk about, it doesn’t hurt to tell your audience “There are the three things I’m going to talk about today…”
4. Do something to grab their attention. Just as with an introductory paragraph to one of your essays, it’s always good to begin a presentation by asking a provocative question, giving an interesting quotation, or in some other way catching your audience’s attention and leading them into your topic.

Written Work

Short Essay Assignments (4-5 pages). Over the course of the term I will post four short assignments for you to complete. These will allow you to explore in greater detail the topics and methodologies we are using in class.

You must follow the guidelines outlined in the Shakespeare Style Sheet before submitting your essays.

Performance Review Students will see one live Shakespeare performance this semester and write a brief review discussing the productions strengths and weaknesses.

Learning Plan and Grading Contract

In this course I will give you a final grade based on a learning plan that you create for yourself at the start of the term using the above categories. You will decide what grade you hope to achieve in this class and what work you are willing to do to meet that goal. I will provide feedback on your work along the way but will not give you letter or numeric grades. Rather, I will let you know one each assignment whether you have satisfied the requirements (and you are allowed to revise or rewrite the assignment multiple times if necessary to achieve satisfactory outcomes).

We will discuss the Learning Plan and contract at the start of the semester, and you will have the opportunity to reflect on and make changes to your plan as the semester goes on.

Why am I using this approach? My goal is to bring the focus to your learning in our class (rather than grades) and to give you the opportunity to choose and shape your course. As I see this course as a collaboration between us I believe strongly that a shared learning plan is key to the success of the course.