Angela Eward-Mangione

Course Description: LIT 2000: Shakespeare's Tragedies will provide the student with an understanding of literature and how it relates to the human experience. Students will also develop the tools for reading and writing critically about literature through the application of close reading and various schools of literary criticism. Course Topic and Theme: This section is focused on a study of four of Shakespeare's tragedies, their historical context, and their cultural contexts, including their treatment of gender. We will learn about the Aristotelean formula for tragedy, the Kydian formula for revenge tragedy, and how Shakespeare's tragedies adhere to these formulas. As we study these plays, we will also consider whether Shakespeare fears or celebrates diversity, particularly as it is expressed through the men, women, and tragic dimensions of these plays. As a springboard, we will use Marilyn French's description of the masculine and feminine principles, including the " split in the feminine principle " she calls the " in-law and outlaw aspects of it " (French). We will ask: to what degree to the heroes of these plays adhere to masculine principles? What about the women in the plays: should they be deemed in-law or outlaw females? How does race further complicate matters of gender? Additionally, which pole is celebrated, elevated, feared, and/or punished the most? Finally, in this age of a heightened sensitivity to gender, what can we learn from Shakespeare's tragedies and the men and women they feature? We will also explore social issues, including prostitution, rape, and domestic violence, as they pertain to the contemporary and early modern eras. Finally, three of our plays, Titus Andronicus, Othello, and Antony and Cleopatra, will feature complicated stories of military men. Course Intended Outcomes: 1. Students will communicate an understanding of core terminology and concepts in literature. 2. Students will discuss the unique contribution of an individual author. 3. Students will connect a culture's values, beliefs, and/or ethical standards to the literary arts. 4. Students will explain how literature reflects and contributes to the cultural history of the world. 5. Students will read and think critically, showing original thought.

Course Description: ENC 1102 is a continuation of ENC 1101. Instruction is persuasive and provides literary based critical and evaluative skills in English composition. A documented research paper is required. Prerequisites: ENC 1101 with a minimum grade of C or S. Course Theme: The theme of this course is " Exploring Social Issues Through Literature, " and this theme has been incorporated into the course in order to further students' interests in the relationship between literature and life. Course Intended Outcomes: 1. Students will be able to formulate a thesis statement and will provide support for the claims made in the thesis statement with an examination of the primary text and with legitimate secondary sources. 2. Students will use standard English grammar in all written assignments and will compose papers that are coherent, unified, and developed. 3. Students will be able to employ logic to articulate, organize, and support an effective and valid written argument that supports the thesis and responds to probable objections without resorting to distortion. 4. Students will be able to find legitimate secondary sources by utilizing scholarly online resources such as LINCC Library Catalog and online databases and will synthesize and integrate secondary sources effectively and clearly, thereby avoiding plagiarism. 5. Students will be able to use critical strategies to analyze, evaluate, and/or interpret written, oral, and/or visual communications, such as, but not limited to, short stories, poetry, dramatic works, novels, or artistic works of non-fiction. 6. Students will be able to summarize and paraphrase.

Who is the alleged “extravagant and wheeling stranger” (1.1.151) that appears simultaneously resplendent and repugnant to audiences here and everywhere? In recent times, William Shakespeare’s 'Othello' has demanded attention for its focus on race. However, this impassioned immigration era begs readers to further consider 'Othello' through the lens of immigration, concentrating more on Othello the “stranger” (1.1.151) than on the “black Othello” (2.3.33). As such, this paper provides an outline and materials for teaching 'Othello' through the lens of immigration. I rely on critical pedagogy discourse to suggest two assignments that support teachers and students in creating a dialogue with each other, the play, and relevant primary and secondary resources. Open Educational Resources for exploring Othello’s geographic origins and situating those origins among early modern England’s and the contemporary United States’ exploding immigration population(s) are provided. These resources invite readers to learn more about the alleged stranger(s) that inhabits not only the play but also the classrooms in which the play is studied.

As her reason for arranging to have a grave stone placed on Zora Neale Hurston’s grave, Alice Walker declared that “‘A people do not forget their geniuses’" (qtd. in Bond and Simon 174). This paper examines the Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive, an innovative Digital Humanities project launched by Anna Lillios, Mark Kamrath, and J.D. Applen, professors at the University of Central Florida, who seek to help teachers and students remember and appreciate Hurston’s writings. I rely on critical pedagogy discourse to argue that the archive preserves Hurston’s literary contributions in a way that can create an atmosphere in which students and teachers participate in a productive dialogue with each other and Hurston’s texts. Examining the archive’s interoperability, manuscript collections and teaching resources, this paper explores the benefits of using the archive and provides two examples of writing assignments that involve its use. Although select studies contest the efficacy of using digital archives in the classroom (Jabr; Crowther et al.), the Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive provides invaluable learning opportunities that outweigh the challenges of using digital archives in the classroom, inspiring students to engage the Digital Humanities to write about Hurston and her work.

This paper discusses Derek Walcott’s play 'A Branch of the Blue Nile' as both a post-colonial adaptation and as dramatic commentary of Shakespeare’s 'Antony and Cleopatra.' It is the first paper to show how discussions of post-colonial adaptations known as “writing back” have also raised important questions about the relationship of select post-colonial adaptations to literary criticism. My paper investigates the significant rhetorical function of Walcott’s play, since “Shakespeare” emerges in it as a problematic signifier, a signifier that complicates the relationship between the past and the present, the material and the abstract, and the representational and the real. 'A Branch of the Blue Nile' interrogates, celebrates, and adapts the cultural influences of Great Britain, America, and the creolized culture of the West Indies, expanding the cultural coordinates of Shakespeare’s play by connecting Egypt, the West Indies, and America in a long line of former colonies of the British Empire. The play also comments on the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, elucidating the complications of their interracial romance within colonial contexts and demonstrating the resonance of Walcott’s play with Fanonin-based criticism of Shakespeare’s play.

In “You Don’t Know Jack: Engaging the Twenty-First Century Student With Shakespeare’s Plays,” Bruce Avery remarks that “recent innovations in the media world have caused a major shift in how young people see themselves and what they do with their days” (136). Moreover, the average American teenager spends an average of seventy-two hours per week using electronic media (136). Electronically inundated students such as these, whom Bruce nicknames “Jack,” may take a General Education Course in Shakespeare, but they primarily write in the compressed lingo of the text message, persistently listen to  MP3 players, are not English majors, and don’t know how—or why—to commit their mental or emotional resources to Shakespeare’s plays (135). Yet when combined with effective pedagogical strategies, technological innovations such as Explore Shakespeare, The Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive, and the Folger Digital Texts can potentially make the play “the thing” of interest to twenty-first century American college students. This paper provides an overview of three twenty-first century projects in the Digital Humanities. These digital resources engage multiple learning styles, offer access to an unprecedented number of performances of Shakespeare’s plays from around the world, and provide platforms for building online Shakespeare-oriented projects. Knowing and employing the technology that Jack—or Jill—like to use in the twenty-first century can help college teachers engage students with Shakespeare’s plays.

In this paper I examine South African dramatist Murray Carlin’s ‘Not Now, Sweet Desdemona’ (1968) as a performative site from which Carlin launches a post-colonial critique of Shakespeare’s ‘Othello.’ Carlin’s rewriting of ‘Othello’ revolves around a white South African actress's and a Black West Indian actor’s contentious rehearsal of the domestic dialogue (3.3.42-100) in Shakespeare’s play. Harvey, the lighting technician, plays the third role in the triangular Othello-Iago-Desdemona relationship. In the introduction to his play, Carlin announces his interpretation of Desdemona as a “terribly persistent” white woman who urges her black spouse Othello to reinstate Cassio, her white protégé, by force. Shakespearean critic Emily Bartels offers a similar reading in her interpretation of ‘Othello’ by examining the gendered, racial relationships of Iago, Othello, and Desdemona: Bartels argues that the domestic dialogue Shakespeare stages in act three, scene three catalyzes Othello’s forthcoming change of mind and heart. Just as criticism of ‘Othello’ has experienced numerous transformations in its treatment of race and gender, an equally significant resistance narrative emerges from analyses of ‘Not Now, Sweet Desdemona.’ Carlin’s rewriting of 'Othello' resonates with post-colonial critics Jyotsna Singh’s and Peter Dickinson’s application of Fanonian theory (‘Black Skin, White Masks’) by re-reading Othello’s desire for Desdemona as a wish to be white. In this view, Desdemona’s pleading of Cassio’s case is a white liberalist mask for her desire to dominate Othello. My paper highlights Carlin’s success in exposing and resisting the miscegenous subtexts in 'Othello,' but this paper also draws attention to Carlin’s repetition and reproduction of misogynist discourse. By analyzing the role of Harvey, who works in tandem with Othello, I argue that Carlin amplifies Desdemona’s race at the expense of her gender, thus erasing her traumatic history as a victim of patriarchal misogyny to emphasize Carlin’s masculine, post-colonial resistance narrative.

As Anne McClintock (1995) has observed, colonial discourse is not a monolithic entity. A colonial motif nonetheless exists in ‘The Tempest’ and the history of its reception. Yet, perceptions and variances of this theme have changed over time. According to Michael Dobson (1991), the earliest responses to ‘The Tempest,’ seventeenth century gender-focused adaptations that supported the Stuart Patriarchy but virtually occluded Caliban, gave way to race-based and nationalistic interpretations of the eighteenth century. For example, the frontispiece to Bell’s acting edition of 1774 depicts the drunkard Caliban as a black man surrendering his allegiance to Trinculo and Stephano. Twentieth-Century  analyses of the play revived the play’s earliest responses, setting a precedent for the colonial case in ‘The Tempest.’ Yet, at the turn of the century, some critics found themselves discontent with the state of criticism of ‘The Tempest.’ Meredith Skura (1989), Deborah Willis (1989), Curt Breight (1990), Brian Vickers (1993), Ben Ross Schneider (1995), and Jerry Brotton (1998) have tested and contested the case precedent for the colonial paradigm in ‘The Tempest. ‘ This paper argues that although select interpretations of ‘The Tempest’ are admirable for eschewing the transposition of ahistorical paradigms onto the play, these same interpretations, which do not account for the full spectrum of the play’s historical reception and critical history, are problematic as well. The findings of Vickers, Skura, Willis, Breight, Schneider, and Brotton prove invaluable to broadening the critical history and legacy of ‘The Tempest,’ but these analyses do not occlude a colonial case.

This paper employs a formalist approach to compare two related narrative poems, 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' by Samuel Coleridge, and “Snake,” by D.H. Lawrence. Both narrative poems employ the sin-guilt-redemption masterplot. Positing masterplots as recognizable tales told repeatedly throughout time, the sin-guilt-redemption masterplot consists of its three constituent events. In the 'Cambridge Introduction to Narrative,' H. Porter Abbott defines constituent events as those that drive the story forward (21). Both 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and “Snake” employ the sin-guilt-redemption masterplot, presenting similar stylistic representations of the sin and guilt events. These stylistic parallels are not sustained, however, since a comparative analysis reveals that in 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' multiple stanzas in three different parts (IV, VI, and VII) narrate the poem’s three redemption events, whereas only two end-stopped lines in “Snake” advance redemption in the reader’s imagination. Although these two lines do not constitute an event, they still drive the story forward. Thus, “Snake” employs the sin-guilt-redemption masterplot through an untraditional and experimental form.

What role did identification play in the motives, processes, and products of select post-colonial authors who "wrote back" to William Shakespeare and colonialism? How did post-colonial counter-discursive metatheatre function to make select post-colonial adaptations creative and critical texts? In answer to these questions, this dissertation proposes that counter-discursive metatheatre resituates post-colonial plays as criticism of Shakespeare's plays. As particular post-colonial authors identify with marginalized Shakespearean characters and aim to amplify their conflicts from the perspective of a dominated culture, they interpret themes of race, gender, and colonialism in 'Othello' (1604), 'Antony and Cleopatra' (1608), and 'The Tempest' (1611) as explicit problems. This dissertation combines post-colonial theory and other literary theory, particularly by Kenneth Burke, to propose a rhetoric of motives for post-colonial authors who "write back" to Shakespeare through the use of counter-discursive metatheatre. This dissertation, therefore, describes and analyzes how and why the plays of Murray Carlin, Aimé Césaire, and Derek Walcott function both creatively and critically, adapting Shakespeare's plays, and foregrounding post-colonial criticism of his plays.

Chapter One analyzes Murray Carlin's motivations for adapting Othello and using the framing narrative of 'Not Now, Sweet Desdemona' (1967) to explicitly critique the conflicts of race, gender, and colonialism in 'Othello.' Chapter Two treats why and how Aimé Césaire adapts 'The Tempest' in 1969, illustrating his explicit critique of Prospero and Caliban as the colonizer and the colonized, exposing Prospero's insistence on controlling the sexuality of his subjects, and, therefore, arguing that race, gender, and colonialism operate concomitantly in the play. Chapter Three analyzes
'A Branch of the Blue Nile' (1983) as both a critique and an adaptation of 'Antony and Cleopatra,' demonstrating how Walcott's framing narrative critiques the notion of a universal "Cleopatra," even one of an "infinite variety," and also evaluates Antony as a character who is marginalized by his Roman culture. The conclusion of this dissertation avers that in "writing back" to Shakespeare, these authors foreground and reframe post-colonial criticism, successfully dismantling the colonial structures that have kept their interpretations, and the subjects of their interpretations, marginalized.

“Literary Criticism: An Introduction,” written for undergraduate students, consists of 7,758 words; discusses 14 schools of modern criticism; refers to 35 modern literary critics; includes 11 tables with vocabulary words and their definitions; and offers over 18 links to sample papers, related readings, and videos. The article also features 56 exercises/questions that students can complete to further enhance their understanding of the material. Each carefully composed set of questions invites students to climb Bloom’s taxonomy to understand and apply what they have read about literary criticism. Additionally, 18 different literary texts from a diverse selection of authors and historical time periods are referred to and discussed in the article in order to illustrate key concepts and critical lenses.

This Regular Session welcomes submissions on any aspect of Modern Drama. Additionally, this year, the session looks to Modern Drama, a publication which was founded in 1958, as its inspiration, inviting a celebration of the publication's sixtieth year. Proposals might adopt the journal's emphasis on analyses of canonical and lesser known dramatic texts from a variety of methodological perspectives. Proposals simultaneously addressing the SAMLA 90 conference theme, Fighters from the Margins: Sociopolitical Activists and Their Allies, are especially welcome. By June 1, 2018, please submit an abstract of 250-300 words, a brief bio, and any A/V requests to Dr. Angela Eward-Mangione (aewardmangione@hccfl.edu) and Mr. Spencer Daniels (smdaniels@mail.usf.edu).