Potential Research Topic: "To Be Or Not To Be"

As I mentioned previously on a couple posts in this blog, I helped to Kickstart a book called To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure by Ryan North. I've described it to most of my friends as a "Choose-Your-Own Hamlet"; it runs through the story of Hamlet from a couple different perspectives, written in an informal, modern tone, and littered with decision points (for example, Hamlet can choose to go and kill Claudius immediately after talking to Hamlet, Sr., instead of agonizing over the decision).

The book is really entertaining, but academically interesting for a number of reasons. Specifically, the book itself criticizes many of the "Canon" choices--when you (as Hamlet) choose to go into Ophelia's room with fouled stockings, etc., then persist in choosing to act crazy in front of her, the narrator actually forcibly takes the reins from you: "You know what? I think you've made enough choices for a while. Move over. I'm driving" (308). Also notable is the "lost" pirate fight scene, which goes on for at least a dozen pages, and is filled with enough bad puns to make even Shakespeare himself groan.

What could make for a really interesting semester project would be a review/survey of To Be Or Not To Be, talking about what changes were made and how that affects the narrative, possibly comparing and contrasting it to other modern "renditions" (Better Myth's "Hamlet is Very Bad At Revenge" comes to mind [language warning]). What could make it even more substantial is talking about why we feel the need to "modernize" the narrative, and, possibly, how books like To Be Or Not To Be could be used to help teach Shakespeare.

If you'd like to check the book out, it retails for about $28 on Amazon, and might be available at one of the local libraries. You're also more than welcome to borrow my copy, and you can also take a peek at the Kickstarter bonuses I got (which is how most of the first edition readers would experience it). Go ahead and email me if you're interested; commenting on this post might send me an alert still, but I'm not sure.

Good luck this semester!
David G.

David's Learning Outcomes

Long, boring wall of text after the jump.

The Story Of David's Paper

The idea for my paper began when I was reading through The Merchant of Venice for the first time. When I   came across Shylock's monologue in 3.1, I was floored. At this point, it's widely known that Antionio is going to default on his loan to Shylock, and Shylock is fiercely defending his right to a pound of Antiono's flesh--the agreed-upon penalty for defaulting. Someone asks Shylock why he wants the pound of flesh in the first place, and Shylock responds:

Mikaela Kemsley: "All in the Timing"

All in the Timing:
Shakespeare creates his own standard of time within The Winter's Tale through the sixteen year gap between the third and fourth acts and the inclusion of music. When one embraces this irregular portrayal of time it alters their way of thinking. This is beneficial in interpreting the play as a Romance and in engaging the play with creative productions. These new thought patterns can also fundamentally change the way one views their every-day reality. Most vitally, an altered thought pattern is essential for fully understanding the fantastical mysticism that characterizes the play.

The Learning Outcomes of Bailey Gleason

Literacy:
Unfortunately most of the in-depth analyzing of Shakespeare's plays that took place in class happened the weeks that I was very ill. I wasn't incredibly active in posting online or coming to class because I spent most of my time in bed trying to fight sickness. I felt gypped of the opportunity to really gain the literacy that I've seen y'all gain, and in part I believe that's why I ended up taking a pop culture route to my paper as opposed to an analysis heavy paper that was all about the text. I just felt I didn't gain the background to do that, but in the end it worked out for me. Something I am extremely grateful for was the opportunity to watch Shakespeare movies which I really haven't done in the past. I really enjoyed watching the plays come to life and I am much looking forward to watching numerous more in the future.

Watch out, world! Story of my paper

Okay, so it took forever for me to get my paper going.

     I came up with a couple different ideas for theses and got great feedback from all of you (thank you!) and from my facebookgroupies along with some really solid advice from Dr. Burton. I found all these possible sources, of which I only ended up using a couple, but that’s okay.

     Thanks to some more guidance from Dr. Burton right at the end I changed my whole approach, (from “comparing R&J to MND andproving that MND was better” to “since we have to teach Shakespeare in spite of these risks, we’d better do it right, so here is WHAT to teach and HOW to do it” which was frustrating, but guess what! It made my topic much more accessible.

     Of course I was procrastinating a lot and praying a lot, which is not advisable but worked out for me: the night I was supposed to be writing this paper but getting nowhere I finally gave up at like 12:00 am and decided to just read a couple of articles for my ENG 378 class and then go to bed. Well guess what, those articles were about Shakespeare! And the next day my ENG 378 teacher shared a Scholastic Scope kids lit magazine that had a MND script in it – I was so surprised and very grateful. Those articles and that magazine fit perfectly into my essay. I also had one good response from a question I posted to a teacher Google community that contributed to my thesis. Equipped with these great tools, I stayed up til 3:30 am and finished that dang paper in the nick of time! Now maybe it will be accepted to the venues I have submitted it to (the Rough Magic guys emailed me back and are looking over my full text!) and go on to change the world! 

THE END: The Story of My Paper

I started the research unit very enthusiastic about this digital/social approach to writing. I had heard reports from some students from last semester's class of their topics and research and was really excited to try my own. I already knew I wanted to do something with Shakespeare and games because I had been digging into the idea of games scholarship of any and all kinds the semester before. Games have always been a huge part of my life, even if I haven't always acknowledged it (no one you know owned a wider array of trading card games as I did--I promise), and I wanted all that time I spent playing games to amount to something interesting and intellectual. Ironically, however, I've played many, many more board and card games in my life than video games--my parents never allowed any video game console into my house until the winter I left for college, so the move to video games was a strange one for me. I figured, though, that in a way gave me an advantage because I could look at games more objectively and intellectually. I could more legitimately answer the question "Can video games be art?" because I hadn't already answered it for myself. I started looking around and found some interesting resources on Shakespeare possibly being a game designer were he alive today, and that helped narrow things down to just four possible paper topics.

The paper I ended up writing was, of course, really a mash-up of all four ideas. (Good thing I had ten pages.) I was pleasantly surprised to find out that other people were actually interested in this topic, and that there was plenty of material from Shakespeare's text itself to support such claims. As I kept looking, I found discussions actually happening about a topic I thought was extremely specific, which was very encouraging. The class really got involved in my paper, too, as I kept getting a lot of good responses on my posts, even when I was just musing. All of this really got me going, so by the time we had to do annotated bibliographies and find possible audiences, I already had tons of info--enough that I could easily pass some of it over to Britton in hopes that he could treat some stuff I didn't have time for but really interested me. By the time I did my first rough draft, my mind was racing all over the place because I had found so much information and so much interest.

That's when my paper took a difficult turn. I realized I was getting too much to say and too many angles on the topic that my paper just wouldn't be cohesive unless I cut. I went back to the primary text because I knew if I stuck close to The Tempest I could keep it tight. When I went back to do research again, I focused a lot more on specific arguments I had rather than general information on video games, art, and Shakespeare like I was doing before. The stuff I found in that round of research actually made up the bulk of my final paper because, thanks to the suggestions of others and some great feedback from author and game philosopher Chris Bateman (twice), I tightened up my paper significantly to be a discussion of the legitimacy of video games in our culture compared to the fight for legitimacy for English drama in Shakespeare's own day, which made for a good first full draft.

In discussions with Dr. Burton late in the game, I found out about the RMMLA conference and, luckily, they had a panel planned for this year's conference about games and new media that instantly became my number one choice for publishing. I got into contact with the panel chair and got enthusiastic responses from her because she was having a hard time getting the panel off the ground, so I was quickly accepted, though with the chance that I might not get to present because the panel might get canceled.

After getting accepted, though, I had to really make sure the paper turned out well, so after a final interview with Professor Burton I made some pretty big organizational changes and brought back a couple elements from my first draft and kicked out some from the full draft and finally submitted my finished paper. I'm still not sure what's going to happen, but I've been so inspired that I'm seriously considering starting a blog about the intersection of the humanities and video games, which I very well might do after this semester ends and I have some free time this summer. It's been a great ride--and it's not over yet.