For Summer 2010 we will focus on the Shakespeare’s tragedies. If time allows we will also read a Romance play, perhaps The Tempest or The Winter’s Tale. We will be focusing much of our discussions on the issues of desire, gender, and sexuality as offered in Shakespeare’s works. We will also be working with modes of production, including film and art, and will be seeing a stage performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays. The main goals of the course are to help you learn to “decode” the language of Shakespeare through close readings and to make you more confident readers of the great Bard. In addition, we will negotiate the difference between the works as they perhaps might have been understood in Shakespeare’s own culture and how they have been understood since