Syllabus
1 Introduction 2 discuss reading from Michael Anderegg pp. x-xi and 1-38 3 discuss reading from Anderegg pp. 39-73 4 discuss reading from Anderegg pp. 74-97; pre-film talk; screening of Macbeth (1952, 107 minutes) 5 finish screening Macbeth; post-film lecture/discussion 6 discuss reading from Anderegg pp. 98-122; pre-film talk; screening of Othello (1952, 89 minutes) 7 finish Othello; post-film lecture/discussion 8 discuss reading from Anderegg pp. 123-67; play clips from Don Quijote 9 pre-film talk; screening of Chimes at Midnight 10 finish screening Chimes at Midnight; post-film lecture/discussion 11 discuss reading from Erik Roraback + Conclusions I 12 Conclusions II
Annotation
OBJECTIVES
This seminar will view, examine and discuss three Shakespeare films by the American film-maker Orson Welles (1915-85).
Particular attention will be paid to Welles's status as, for some critics including Michael Anderegg in his Orson Welles,
Shakespeare, and Popular Culture, the preeminent American disseminator so far of Shakespeare to American popular culture and so to American cultural consciousness: Hence we shall explore how Welles sought to present the bard to his
American audiences not only in his three Shakespeare films but also in his other Shakespeare cinema projects, translations of Shakespeare plays, and theatre work on Shakespeare that we shall discuss from our readings, above all in interviews with Welles and in Anderegg's tome. We shall also ask how much Welles's work on Shakespeare affected Shakespeare academics and the teaching of the bard within American academies. Attention will also be paid to the cinematically revolutionary new kinds of subjects, souls, and life, and strategic modes for viewing that the images of this foregoing corpus of work invokes and elicits from its viewers. In a more general and far-reaching key that traverses national-cultural boundaries, the presentation and critique of ´modernity´ found in Shakespeare-Welles will also be interrogated as an object of focus from multiple theoretical perspectives (baroque, Niklas Luhmann social systems theory, the Frankfurt School,
Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, and so on).
ASSESSMENT:
To receive credit for the seminar students will be required to have no more than three absences and to submit a final composition of 2000-2500 words on a topic of their creative choice. (Specialization students will be required to submit another longer final essay of 3000-3500 words that may also be marked as písemná práce.)