ENG745/001: Metamorphoses, Shakespeare, and Queer/Trans Studies
Instructor: Dr. Derrick Higginbotham
Time: Fridays, 3.15pm – 5.45pm
Location: KUY 313
Email: deh2@hawaii.edu
Office Hours: TBD
Location: KUY 618
Course Description
This class is organized around the study of the writer Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. We also will read Shakespeare’s poem “Venus and Adonis” (1593), as well as his plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595/6) and Titus Andronicus (1588-93) since Shakespeare uses Golding’s translation as a source for these texts. To some degree, we will think about how Shakespeare adapts this particularly labile source when crafting his plays and poems. While we are reading Golding’s translation, we also will create a class dictionary of rhetorical terms, cross referencing them with George Puttenham’s The Art of English Posie (1589), one of the most influential rhetorical handbooks of the period. This assignment will help us build a stronger critical and rhetorical vocabulary for analyzing literary and non-literary texts.
There are two central goals of this seminar. Firstly, Metamorphoses has become a critical engine for queer/trans approaches in early modern studies since Ovid’s text focuses on the instability of sexuality and gender, so this class will attend especially to those moments in the text that are well served by a queer/trans analytic. Moreover, the Shakespearean texts present different ways to use a queer/trans analytic. We will consider, for instance, the notion of the ‘transplant,’ as Vin Nardizzi theorizes it, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which contemplates fusions of humans with plants, along with other expressions of tranimality. We also will reflect on why critics analyze “Venus and Adonis” as offering a depiction of Venus sissifying Adonis and what sissification means. The first goal will lead directly to the second goal, which is to provide everyone in class with a firm foundation in queer/trans studies by reading a range of scholars—some of who focus on the early modern era and some who do not—including Simone Chess, Colby Gordon, Will Fisher, Kadji Amin, Andrea Long Chu, Mel Y. Chen, Leah DeVun, Grace Lavery, Greta LaFleur, Marlon B. Ross, and Beans Velocci. What might a queer/trans analytic look like, generally speaking? How can we use it when analyzing literary texts/cultural materials? How does the past inform or challenge the present-future in terms of queer/trans analyses? We will try to answer questions like these over the course of the semester, even as we home in on rhetorical, poetic, and performance dimensions of the texts at hand.
Student Learning Outcomes:
In this course, students will:
- Practice reading literary texts critically and appreciate how genre shapes content
- Present information orally in an organized manner appropriate for intended a) audience and b) purpose
- Grasp the history of the theatre in early modern England and its importance as a cultural and political institution
- Improve one’s understanding of queer/trans studies
- Sharpen one’s argumentative writing skills
- Better one’s skills at presenting ideas via a social media format
- Improve skills in incorporating and documenting secondary scholarship when crafting an argumentative essay
Required Readings
Nims, John Frederick, editor. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Arthur Golding’s Translation of 1567. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2000.
Shakespeare, “Venus and Adonis,” PDF will be provided.
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Arden Edition. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus. Arden Edition. London Bloomsbury, 2018.
Puttenham, George. The Art of English Posie: A Critical Edition. Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn, eds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. We will use Hamilton Library’s online edition for the class because it is easy to do a word search on an e-copy.
Methods of Assessment
Participation: 10%
Explication of the text: 15%
Vertical Video Assignment (Group work) 15%
Presentation on one of our queer/trans studies readings: 15%
Contribution to our Poetical Dictionary (two rhetorical terms, so 5% each): 10%
Research paper: 35%