For our final week of class, we will be discussing the ways in which the materials of our course have had an afterlife in contemporary times. You may take this on as an individual project or as a shared presentation, but please let me know as soon as you can if you are choosing to work on a team and with whom.
There are a number of ways to approach this topic, including possibilities not included in the list below, but here are a few ideas to get you started:
-Modern day utopias and utopian communities, both real and imagined
-Contemporary narratives and representations about the Tudors and Tudor history
-Direct adaptations of authors and works we have discussed (Malory, Richard III, etc.)
-Indirect adaptations inspired by the works we have read
-Adaptations of genres that originated in the sixteenth century (history plays, essays)
In class you will give a presentation of about 10 minutes on what you have chosen, and take about half of your time to share your example. Then offer some thoughts on what you think your cultural artifact reflects about our interest today in the sixteenth century. Do the authors or creators of the work(s) you identified seem to know the historical origins for this material? Are there interesting alterations or strategies for updating of the work you are looking at? Ultimately, you should try to answer the questions of how we imagine the sixteenth century today, in what ways it remains relevant (or, perhaps, has lost relevance), and, perhaps, what our interest in this period tells us about the world today.