Gürtner, Susanne

 Shakespeare in Performance

This course offers students the opportunity to explore the works of William Shakespeare and the literature of the early modern period through the lens of performance. The course will employ a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating elements of literary studies, theatre history, and performance theory. Throughout the course, students will actively engage in reading, discussing, and performing selected plays, examining their historical context and thematic depth, and exploring performance as a means of approaching and interpreting these texts.

 The first part of the course consists of four introductory sessions that will familiarise students with the Early Modern period and contemporary performance and provide an introduction to the plays that will explore further in performance later in the course. For the second part of the course, we will meet for a two-day performance workshop at the “Theater an der Uni” in which students will deepen their understanding through practical exercises, scene studies, and group performances.

Early Modern Tragedy

Tragedy was one of the most popular, varied and innovative genres of the Early Modern period, spanning from the stage-shattering tragic heroes of Christopher Marlowe to the sophisticated and dark visions of intrigue, lust, and revenge of the Jacobean stage. In this course, we will engage with a variety of tragic sub-genres (including revenge tragedy, closet drama, and domestic tragedy) and investigate their varied sources, as well as the cultural and socio-political contexts that influenced both generic conventions and staging practices. We will explore how these texts engage with contemporary debates about the nature of power, justice and revenge, gender and sexuality, legitimacy of rule and personal agency.

 Texts:

William Shakespeare, Hamlet (please buy the Arden Shakespeare 3^rd Edition),

Anonymous, Arden of Faversham, Elizabeth Carey, The Tragedy of Mariam (both texts are contained in The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama – digital copy available via UB)

Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (both texts are contained in The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama – digital copy available via UB)

Requirements: Active participation, reading responses, term paper (8–10 pages).

Queering the Renaissance

This course will explore how we can approach issues of gender and sexuality in the Early Modern period from a modern perspective without reductively superimposing our own assumptions about these topics. How can we talk about and interpret issues surrounding sexuality in a period that does have no conception of sexual orientation or identity? How does the cross-dressing theatre of the period, with its all-male casts, reflect on the issue of gender? This course tries to approach these questions through a historical lens by introducing students to relevant contemporary cultural contexts and discourses surrounding friendship, homosociality, marriage, cross-dressing, etc. Our investigations, however, will not be limited to a historical perspective. These texts will be read alongside foundational and contemporary works of criticism in the fields of gender, sexuality, queer, and trans studies.

Texts:
William Shakespeare, As You Like It and Twelfth Night (please buy the Arden Shakespeare 3^rd Edition)
Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, The Roaring Girl,
Christopher Marlowe: Edward II (both texts are contained in The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama – digital copy available via UB)
John Lyly, Gallathea (copy will be made available via GRIPS).

Requirements: Active participation, reading responses, term paper (8–10 pages).