Saturday, March 2, 2013

Reviewing My Interests: Shakespeare's Women on Film

I went through the posts for our class forums and found that I have gravitated most toward women's issues in and film adaptations of Shakespeare. I've been tossing around a few ideas over the past few days, and I would like some feedback on them:
  1. I could expand my original paper on Kate in Taming of the Shrew to include the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton film. I talked with Dr. Burton about how to make my literary analysis paper stand out more as a piece of scholarship in my midterm evaluation meeting, and it would be fun to rewatch that film and analyze Taylor's portrayal of Kate, especially in light of her own relationship with Richard Burton.
  2. I could look at Emilia from Othello--she's the wife of Iago and therefore occupies an interesting role in the play. I don't have much work at all done on this option, and I'm not sure what film adaptation I would pair with it, but I have gotten this idea vetted through Facebook.
  3. I could return to the King Lear 2008 adaptation that we recently watched and analyze how the casting and costuming of the daughters contributes to or undermines their portrayal as evil or good. I talked about this a little on the class forums, mentioning how I thought some of the wardrobe choices for the daughters were bizarre (strapless dresses?) and almost asked the audience to judge a woman's character based on how good they looked in the revealing dresses. I've been excited about this idea lately, but I would still like feedback.
What do you guys think? What would make you most excited to read my paper?

2 comments:

  1. My small vote is for the paper about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. I remember some of the discussion about that earlier and I think you'll make some intriguing arguments!

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  2. The way I see it you could pick any one of these options, or you could have a comprehensive thesis about feminism in Shakespeare or something that would be able to incorporate all three. Normally I wouldn't suggest that, but this is a longer paper so if you work hard enough at it it could work.

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