a. Breadth (knowledge of a range of Shakespeare's works)
I started out this semester as a Shakespeare skeptic. I felt like I had had a lot of exposure to Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello). But then we/I read the Shakespearean sonnets this semester, delved into The Taming of the Shrew and women's roles; discussed Shakespeare's history plays (including reading Henry V); and explored the depths of Macbeth's treacherous mind in Macbeth. We analyzed King Lear and tackled the crazy romanticism of The Winter's Tale. I can now honestly say that I have an appreciation for Shakespeare, that he is no longer categorized in my brain as the famous playwright who totally appealed to the masses in his tale of two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. I appreciated that we explored his different genres, as I'd never read his history plays and really enjoyed Henry V and never read his romances. I think my understanding of Shakespeare could only have come as I was exposed to his different works and realized how dynamic a playwright he was.
b. Depth (more thorough knowledge of a single work)
I studied The Winter's Tale on my own for part of our thesis-crafting assignment, for my midterm paper, and for my term paper, looking at different aspects of the play. I was so intrigued by this weird romance, this conglomeration of tragedy and comedy and the supernatural, these characters who were human and interesting, and this weird scene at the end with a huge question mark over its metaphorical head: Have Hermione and Paulina just pulled the wool over everybody's eyes, or is Hermione's coming back to life from being a statue really a miracle? These were all things that were essential to the figuring out of my thesis, which required some diagramming.
c. Performance (stage and screen)
Dr. Burton emphasized the social aspect of performance, so I tried to integrate that into my own performance-watching experience. I:
- read out loud the first couple of scenes of Taming of the Shrew with my brother Joseph.
- watched King Lear with my boyfriend Matt and talked about it afterward.
- went with our class and my roommate to see Henry V, performed by the BYU Young Company
- watched Henry's St. Crispin's Day speech with my roommate Skylar and our friend Tanner
- read out loud that speech with Tanner and Skylar
- watched part of Henry V with Nyssa, Liz, and my nephew Reed in the media center of the HBLL
- saw a performance of The Winter's Tale at Mikaela's suggestion, entitled A Winter's Fairytale, that focused on the story of Perdita and Florizel
d. Legacy (history, scholarship, popular culture)
I read about the historical context of Macbeth and learned more about romances, after researching Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. We researched different productions of The Winter's Tale throughout the years, and I realized that Shakespeare adaptations are never-ending and always trying to outdo each other. Through a glimpse at Bailey's posts, I saw that even reality TV today is affected by Shakespeare's works, and that Shakespeare is a playwright, but he's also a businessman, appealing to the masses.
2. Analyze Shakespeare Critically
This learning outcome was fulfilled as I researched about The Winter's Tale and, as we were expected to do self-directed learning for each play we read in class. I spent time doing research on literary criticism through the help of Stanley Wells' work on Shakespeare and creating annotated bibliographies of my research from class. It was cool to include what I'd learned from friends and social networks.
We spent most of the semester analyzing Shakespeare critically, not just using themes or plot lines of his plays to prove our points, but using metaphors, like the Oracle in The Winter's Tale as a metaphor for the play in this post. We were encouraged to go back to the text, to see how Henry V used rhetoric to convince people to follow him, to see how animals played a part in The Taming of the Shrew. As Shakespeare's works are so vast, and it's easy to feel intimidated, it was helpful to realize that there are all of these literary devices to use to understand what Shakespeare is really trying to say, not just huge chunks of text that we need to take in.
3. Engage Shakespeare Creatively
What comes to mind when thinking about this learning outcome is the sonnet we were required to write and perform after a unit on Shakespeare's sonnets. I knew we needed to have iambic pentameter with the right rhyme scheme, but I was at a loss for what to do, and my first draft was not very good. But then it hit me. I had been sick and wanted to approach Shakespeare's sonnets with a twist, not talking about love or death, so I wrote "The Invalidated Invalid," shared in on facebook, and got sixty views on youtube, along with involving my roommates in the video's production! Win. Win.
4. Share Shakespeare Meaningfully
a. Formal
Formally, I shared Shakespeare by submitting my paper on The Winter's Tale to the Criterion (BYU's literary criticism magazine) and to BYU's Scholars Archive for my grandchildren to see someday. I blogged about my learning process, including interesting developments to my paper and fun facts about Shakespeare. I read other students' posts (including Mikaela and Paul), learning more about Shakespeare from them, and commented on their paper progress.
I started an e-mail correspondence with an eleventh grade teacher in Canada about using a blog to teach Shakespeare, and struck up a conversation with Martin on goodreads, an Englishman who enjoys Shakespeare. He gave me some great points that helped me to develop my thesis, and we discussed ekphrastic elements of The Winter's Tale and works of art mentioned within the play. I discussed my papers with Dr. Burton and he pointed out some problems with my midterm paper thesis that I had not seen.
b. Informal
I read parts of the plays out loud with friends often. I watched a lot of scenes of the different plays with friends. I discussed the idea of life being a tragedy or a comedy with ward members, with my roommate Skylar on our walk home in the dark, with my boyfriend Matt, and with my peers in class. These discussions helped me to see how I could clarify what I meant by a romance in my thesis and to discover the controversial nature of calling life a comedy. I tried to use friends and experts as willing resources in my search for answers during term paper-writing.
Throughout the semester, I felt like learning about Shakespeare and his plays was being a very social process, that there were people invested in my paper that I'd never met, and that was pretty encouraging for me to continue writing it and sharing my new-found appreciation of Shakespeare.
5. Gain Digital Literacy
Other blogs about Shakespeare, including the one by that eleventh-grade class in Canada, were helpful, as well as tapping into the research done by a bookgroup on a goodreads forum called "Shakespeare Fans," which I joined and posted about.
I joined twitter and started following Stanley Wells, which was fun because I was also reading research by him through the library subject guides website. I didn't get in contact with him, but it was fun to know more about him. I blogged and learned to blog more effectively from Dr. Burton, who taught us how to use photos that weren't copyrighted, employ line breaks, break up text, and link to prior posts to put things in context. This blog post is breaking the rules of length, unfortunately, but its length is not a reflection that I didn't learn the importance of shorter blog posts!!
6. Reflections on the Social Process
What I found most valuable about this social process of paper-writing, besides the new and interesting points that people brought up when I talked to them about Shakespeare, was the encouragement to continue writing. I had been feeling pretty frustrated as I wrote the blog post about Hermione possibly just tricking everyone with her whole statue thing, but my peers were so encouraging in the comments and responded positively to my thesis, so I felt okay continuing on. It was nice to know that I wouldn't get to the end of writing my paper without ever having someone read it and then find out that what I'd written about was entirely uninteresting or uninformed. I felt like people were invested in my paper, so I should be invested in my paper.
There were a couple times when having social interactions and blogging about them did feel like jumping through a hoop, but that's when I didn't have the right attitude. I think it would be helpful to assign future students to read about our blog posts from this semester that are specifically when we talk about the usefulness (and maybe when it didn't work for them) of social learning, so they know how social learning can help them with their end goal.
No comments:
Post a Comment