Upper School Curriculum

Grade: 12
Fall

PREREQ: Teacher recommendation advised 

This is not a course about a solitary genius who lived and wrote 400 years ago in England, but rather a living, breathing body of literature that is in current production, adaptation and public discourse all over the world. What is it about this remarkable literature that allows it to bend to the questions, concerns, mindsets and sensibilities of each new audience it encounters? Students will explore this question and learn how to think with Shakespeare alongside the diverse scholars, public intellectuals, creatives, artistic directors, actors, writers, readers, and theatergoers around the globe engaged in this project. That is to say, we will use this body of literature as a tool for examining our society past and present, ourselves, the human condition in all its messy glory and how language and literature function as both source and solution to our social and human problems. But Shakespeare’s plays are not all serious business. Students will also learn to delight and participate in the poetry and playfulness of these texts. Students can expect college-level standards for reading, thinking, discussion and writing skills, as well as a wide range of assignments, including literary analysis and explication, critical engagement with scholarship in the field, independent research, formal seminar discussion, scene analysis and scene play, sonnet recitations and creative writing.