Global Shakespeare

Overview

Academic Lead: Professor David Schalkwyk

Syllabus: SUM502D_Global_Shakespeare [PDF 96KB]

How and why are Shakespeare’s plays performed, filmed, read and taught from China to Chile, from Singapore to South Africa? What makes Shakespeare a “global” force?  Shakespeare's plays display the vast panoply of human desires and emotions: from passionate love to bewildering fear, from unswerving loyalty to basest envy, from the noblest instances of self-sacrifice to the desire to inflict unspeakable pain. His depictions of these emotions are often shocking in their vividness, yet always recognisable as fundamental facets of human experience. This course will look at Shakespeare’s afterlives in different parts of the world, and include hands-on workshops in which we will try out different possible ways of interpreting “global” plays like Antony and Cleopatra.

Course aims

This course aims to introduce students to a range of recent developments in Shakespeare’s afterlives around the globe, allowing them:

• to understand the global cultural exchange and globalization more generally as a force in the dissemination of Shakespeare in the twenty-first century;
• to grasp the ways in which Shakespeare's plays themselves engage with worlds beyond early modern England as a way of exploring and representing Shakespeare's own world;
• use global theory and criticism to analyse and interpret a range of Shakespearean (and other early modern) texts;
• understand the history of the theory of tragedy and its significance for understanding Shakespearean tragedy in a globalized world;
• read Shakespearean texts closely, in a historically and theoretically informed way, and convey such interpretations in appropriately scholarly forms of discourse and writing in the light of the latest available research findings.

Teaching and learning

In the heart of Shakespeare's London, a short tube ride away from the Globe Theatre, you will discover and debate a range of recent developments in Shakespeare studies, and learn to read carefully, think deeply, and write clearly. That is--

• to read Shakespearean texts closely, in a historically and theoretically informed way, and convey your interpretations in appropriately scholarly forms of discourse and writing
• to analyse cinematic works that take Shakespeare's plays as their source text or their inspiration, from a range of countries around the globe including Japan, India, Mexico, and Malaysia to grasp the ways in which Shakespeare's plays themselves engage with worlds beyond early modern England, as a way of exploring and representing Shakespeare's own world; and
• to understand global cultural exchange, and globalisation more generally, as a force for the dissemination of Shakespeare in the twenty-first century.

Fees

Additional costs

All reading material will be provided online, so it is not necessary to purchase any books.

You will be required to pay your travel costs to and from any field trips.

For course and housing fees visit our finance webpage

Entry requirements

Entry requirements

We welcome Summer School students from around the world. We accept a range of qualifications

How to apply

Have a question? Get in touch - one of the team will be happy to help!

Applications close 26 May 2025