FYS 1284 - Pop Culture Shakespeares!

Credits: 4
From Disney to Dicaprio. From Taylor Swift to punk rock. From Star Wars to Simpsons. From comics and commercials to video games and viral videos. The incredible influence of William Shakespeare and his works continues to define global culture. This course will focus in particular on the role that Shakespeare’s plays have had in twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular culture, including music, advertising, television, film, and much more. Students will read several of Shakespeare’s most well-known and well-beloved plays in order to track their afterlife in modern and contemporary media. Students will also design their own reimaginings of Shakespeare’s texts using digital resources. By adapting Shakespeare for today’s audiences, students will come to understand the kinds of creative efforts that have kept Shakespeare relevant for 400 years and counting.
McDaniel Plan: First-Year Seminar; Creative Expression; Textual Analysis