Each lecture in this series focuses on a single play by Shakespeare, …
Each lecture in this series focuses on a single play by Shakespeare, and employs a range of different approaches to try to understand a central critical question about it. Rather than providing overarching readings or interpretations, the series aims to show the variety of different ways we might understand Shakespeare, the kinds of evidence that might be used to strengthen our critical analysis, and, above all, the enjoyable and unavoidable fact that Shakespeare's plays tend to generate our questions rather than answer them.
Many books and university courses, trying to compensate for a history of …
Many books and university courses, trying to compensate for a history of the neglect or mistrust of plays as performance, use the phrase "from page to stage" to think about the dramatic possibilities of their texts. In fact, for the early modern theatre, the phrase needs to be the other way around--from stage to page. Plays were performances first, and only later, and then only sometimes, books. This section of Great Writers gathers resources--podcasts, eBooks, websites--to explore the two interconnected lives of the early modern play--as an event in time and space on the stage of the Globe or Blackfriars theatre, and as a material printed object, on sale to Elizabethan and Jacobean readers in the booksellers' quarter around St Paul's Churchyard.
This section brings together resources from the across the Great Writers Inspire …
This section brings together resources from the across the Great Writers Inspire site to illustrate how these can be used as a starting point for exploration of or classroom discussion about economic and social literary criticism. The 'Economic and Social Literary Criticism' essay introduces a series of topics and questions and gives examples of resources to explore. It is aimed at teachers, students and anyone who is interested in literature who wants to put text into context and be inspired by Great Writers.
This section brings together resources from the across the Great Writers Inspire …
This section brings together resources from the across the Great Writers Inspire site to illustrate how these can be used as a starting point for exploration of or classroom discussion about the political aspects of literature. The 'Approaching Political Literature' essay introduces a series of topics and questions and gives examples of resources to explore. It is aimed at teachers, students and anyone who is interested in literature who wants to put text into context and be inspired by Great Writers.
This section brings together resources from the across the Great Writers Inspire …
This section brings together resources from the across the Great Writers Inspire site to illustrate how these can be used as a starting point for exploration of or classroom discussion about genre. The 'Questions of Genre' essay introduces a series of topics and questions and gives examples of resources to explore. It is aimed at teachers, students and anyone who is interested in literature who wants to put text into context and be inspired by Great Writers.
The Elizabethan and Jacobean theatres specialized in new plays which had relatively …
The Elizabethan and Jacobean theatres specialized in new plays which had relatively few performances over a period of a few weeks. There was thus a huge appetite for fresh writing, and hundreds of plays, many now lost, were produced, often collaboratively. In this section of Great Writers Inspire some of these non-Shakespearean plays and authors are introduced through a combination of podcasts, eBooks and supporting materials.
This series of six lectures introduces six plays from the Elizabethan and …
This series of six lectures introduces six plays from the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. Once popular and now little-known, they can tell us a lot about what their first audiences enjoyed, aspired to and worried about - from immigrants in early modern London to the role of women in the household, from what religious changes might mean for attitudes to the dead to fantasies of easy money and social elevation. Each lecture outlines the play so there is no assumption you have already read it, then goes on to try to understand its historical context and its dramatic legacy, drawing parallels with modern film and contemporary culture as well as with Elizabethan material. The lecturer's aim with students in the room and with interested listeners on iTunes U is to broaden our understanding of the theatre Shakespeare wrote for by thinking about some non-Shakespearean drama, and to recreate some of the excitement and dramatic possibilities of the new, popular technology of Renaissance theatre.
In the fall of 2021, students in Pseudoscience courses started creating this …
In the fall of 2021, students in Pseudoscience courses started creating this open educational resource (OER), which has been built upon by subsequent classes. Our intention is to create a free textbook for this course that might also be used by students of critical thinking elsewhere and of all ages, whether in a classroom or not. Our growing, interactive textbook employs the Paul-Elder Model and other critical-thinking resources, and is freely available to all, learners and educators alike.
The topic of pseudoscience offers a rewarding way for students to learn the value of thinking critically, even as they get to argue things, like Flat Earth Theory and astrology, that may seem trivial at first. At a time when truth is understood as largely subjective, we have, not surprisingly, seen a resurgence in the popularity of pseudosciences and conspiracy theories, which many consider to hold significant truth value, just as valid as physical evidence. It is our aim here to demonstrate the reasoned analysis process — weighing truth, belief, opinion, and fact — so that others may be able to replicate this process and reason through their own questions about vaccines, extra-terrestrials, genetic modification, or the first people to arrive in the Americas.
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