| PREVIOUSLY TAUGHT UNDERGRADUATE
COURSES
English 416/419: Dekker,
Middleton, Jonson and the Drama of Everyday Life
Turner
This course examines
plays by three of the most important comic dramatists of the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton,
and Ben Jonson. Through a close reading of their work alongside selected
theoretical essays, we will open an investigation into the major institutions,
social structures, and lived habits that shaped everyday life for
people at the turn of the seventeenth century. Discussion will consider
the fundamental qualities of early modern drama (language, character,
prop, act and scene), with a focus on the way plays provided a form
for different and often radically conflicting systems of knowledge,
values, or belief. Readings will include social history of the period;
theoretical essays by Althusser, de Certeau, Weber, Barthes, and others
will serve as guides to methodology. Topics will include the definition
of the “normal,” the “ordinary,” the radical,
and the deviant; competing lexicons and ways of speaking; satire;
the theater as a site of eroticism, fantasy, and dissident sexuality;
the emergence of “private life”; the influence of a market
economy; objects as commodities, fetishes and signs; using, walking,
and gifting as models of action, knowledge, and social transformation.
Previous coursework in Renaissance drama (including Shakespeare) is
recommended but not required. Course will be in a seminar format (primarily
discussion, with occasional mini-lectures); students should be prepared
for a high reading load, including dense and abstract theoretical
essays, and be ready to sustain a high level of intellectual effort
for the duration of the course.
German 601: German Culture before 1648 (Fall 2000)
Mödersheim
http://palimpsest.lss.wisc.edu/~moeders/gr601
German 611 German Literature before 1700 (2001-2002)
Mödersheim
http://palimpsest.lss.wisc.edu/~moeders/gr611
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