Shakespeare on Film
Final Project Report:
19 February, 2002, Lisa McDonnell
Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky and I have now completed the grant work for the collaborative Denison/Kenyon course, Shakespeare on Film, with the exception of editing and digitizing a few additional clips of Shakespeare films that we realized would be desirable after we had taught the course. The editing and digitizing of the clips will be completed with the help of a student assistant from Denison before the end of the current semester. Attached please find a copy of the syllabus from the Denison version of the course, a course the students and I enjoyed very much. Not only do I have fresh perspectives on teaching and Shakespeare as a result of the grant, but also some exciting ideas for new scholarship.
To recapitulate the preparation I undertook for the course: I studied other people’s course plans for Shakespeare on Film on the internet and in books on teaching Shakespeare; ordered dozens of books on Shakespeare on Film and on teaching film from the Denison University Library, Consort, and Ohiolink; researched a critical corpus of films in literary and film journals and constructed a bibliography of pertinent articles; constructed a number of experimental syllabi; ordered a large number of new books for the library to support the course; ordered a large number of VHS cassettes of Shakespeare films (classic and contemporary, foreign and domestic, conservative and avant garde) for the course; ordered books and films for my own preparation for teaching the course; read and watched everything; constructed lecture and discussion sessions for the classes; and selected clips from the Shakespeare films for digitizing for classroom use. On the technological side: (1) I implemented the use of Blackboard, on which I posted the assignments schedule, film schedule, course policies, and list of textbooks; I also made regular use of the email function to communicate with the class. (2) I set up Electronic Reserves (ERes) readings for my seminar. ERes provided such an easy and pleasant way to do reserve reading that the assignments were actually read! (3) I learned the basics of editing film clips and hired student employees whom I supervised in digitizing film clips. (4) I set up a web site for the course, complete with all of the clips we had digitized, allowing students to review the clips for closer analysis during paper and examination writing.
I have to admit that, after all the academic and technological preparation, I worried that the course itself would be a letdown, too freighted with technology to be Shakespearean—or even enjoyable. Amazingly, neither fear was realized. In general, discussion in the Senior Seminar was astonishingly good, especially from a class who, disappointingly for me, did not have much of a textual Shakespearean background. Instead of being resistant to the technology, the class willingly embraced it, openly relishing the use of film clips in class to focus discussion and to illustrate film “shots” and techniques. They responded so well to the digitized clips, in fact, that I am tempted to use the technology in the lower level Shakespeare course, which I have always tried to keep strictly textual. I also initially feared that the study of film techniques would render the course too technical, too divorced from the liberal arts. Instead, I discovered a new approach to the Shakespearean text that offers a multiplicity of fresh interpretations.
Students responded positively to other technologies used in the course, as well. The day I announced that all reserve readings would be available through ERes (Electronic Reserves), the class responded with trepidation, but once they had mastered the technology, they were wildly enthusiastic. I think I can safely claim that this is the first class I have ever taught in which the students perused the vast majority of the reserve reading! They also responded well to Blackboard, although I ended up not using some of the functions of that technology, because I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by technology myself. However, I learned Blackboard feeling that I would use it only for the length of the grant, and ended up using it for all of my courses the following semester! That is what happened with each of the technologies I employed: I initially found them cumbersome and frustrating, but ended up liking them all so much that I incorporated them into subsequent classes. Given that, I feel that, for my students and me, at least, the Mellon Grant has been extremely successful, giving us a comfortable and supportive environment in which to explore new technology until we became confident in our use of it.
Besides informing my teaching in new and interesting ways, my study of Shakespeare on Film from a technological standpoint has given me a number of new directions in which to take my research. I have started to take notes for articles on Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Michael Almeredya’s Hamlet, and I can connect Paul Junger’s 10 Things I Hate about You (a film which updates Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew) with my current research into Renaissance shrew taming, as well. In addition, I have started to take notice of Calls for Papers on the use of technology in the Shakespearean classroom, another topic I now feel qualified to discuss.
Lisa McDonnell, Denison University