Course No: 350:617
Index #: 19053
Distribution Requirement: A2
Mondays - 2:00 pm
MU 207
Renaissance Drama and Social Justice
Fulton, Thomas
Bartels, Emily
Early modern drama evolved in the margins of central London at a moment when categories of privilege and unprivileged “difference” had not yet congealed. An effervescently popular (in all senses) art form, drama contributed significantly to the period’s identification, interrogation, and adjudication of “social justice,” the equitable distribution of rights and privileges. Using a range of early modern plays as a primary window into this evolving discourse, this course will look at how, and at whose hands, assumptions of equity get coded into – or out of – representations of difference. We will focus in particular on loaded constructions and intersections of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, class, and physical ability and fairness. We will consider how these contribute to the period’s changing conceptions of what is legally, morally, religiously, theatrically, or otherwise socially “just” – with an eye not only to the early modern moment but also our own.
The course will center on a range of plays: likely including Marlowe, Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta; Peele, The Battle of Alcazar; Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Henry IV, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest; Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling; Jonson, Epicoene; and Heywood, The Fair Maid of the West. We will put this drama in conversation with provocative critical, historical, and fictional texts as we delve into such topics as racial coding and interracial marriage; sexual legislation and common law; national sovereignty and international terrorism; speculation as discrimination; religious violence and “truth”; gendered violence and silence; the “average man” and theatrical privilege; ugliness and alienation.
Writing a handful of shorter 2-page memos, students will work across the term to develop a 14-18 page final paper centered on one or more of the course plays or related texts. We’ll schedule presentations of the work for the final class days.