Global Shakespeare: Othello’s Venice in the World

About

The Summer School aims to gather an international cohort of graduate students for a week-long, multi-faceted exploration of one of the most timely topics in the interdisciplinary humanities: Shakespeare’s global contexts and futures. In order to provide focus and coherence, the play Othello, set in multicultural Venice, will be taken as case study throughout the summer school.
Each day will begin with a lecture from a different disciplinary standpoint, which will be followed by a two-hour seminar discussion. Afternoons will be spent in the workshop where the ideas explored in the morning will be tested through embodied theatrical experimentation. These workshops will be with actors from the Venice Shakespeare Company.

Course leader

Kevin Curran, Professor of Early Modern Literature at the University of Lausanne and President of the Lausanne Shakespeare Festival (Scientific Coordinator)

Target group

Graduate students (MA and PhD) from various disciplines: Literary Studies, Shakespeare Studies, Theater and Performance Studies, History, Politics, Philosophy, Anthropology, Media and Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Art, Gender Studies, Queer Studies.

Course aim

- A clear historical sense of the way Shakespeare’s works are imbricated in a global world of commerce, ideas, and performance, both in Shakespeare’s time and our own.
- A nuanced theoretical understanding of globalism and cosmopolitanism, and especially of the unique ways in which Shakespeare’s writing and dramaturgy contribute to a long tradition of thought on these topics.
- An appreciation for the way performance constitutes not only a creative practice, but also a form of applied and embodied critical thought, one especially useful for exploring the meanings and implications of a “global Shakespeare”.

Fee info