The CEA Forum (College English Association, Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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Pygmalion, Prometheus, and the Art of the Capstone
No full textThis article focuses upon my experience in developing and teaching our English Department’s relatively new senior capstone seminar, in which I’ve made “creativity” the theme. Ours is a small department with a curriculum that consciously integrates the study of literature with the study of writing, and so our capstone course must address the needs and interests of students with a variety of curricular emphases. Students synthesize and expand upon what they have learned throughout their English major, and here I share how the course’s theme, topics, and requirements have effectively served our graduating seniors and our department
Using Sentiment Analysis to Ease Students toward or around Macroanalysis
No full text"Using Sentiment Analysis to Ease Students toward or around Macroanalysis" introduces teachers to the mathematical analytical method currently being promoted by Matthew Jockers which he calls macroanalysis. This method uses an algorithm called "R," originally designed by researchers in sociology. In many ways, macroanalysis presents an approach to literary analysis that might seem to many traditionalists to run counter to our training as close readers or advocates of specific literary theories. Instead of focusing on specific elements in a limited number of texts, macroanalysis uses a computer to consume a huge number of literary works--more than a single human being could read in a lifetime--and collect a statistically significant amount of data, a search which has been programmed into the algorithm by the researcher. This use of a computer to do the reading for the researcher results in a new methodology which Jockers calls "distant reading" (a term he borrows from Franco Moretti). After providing an introductory discussion of macroanalysis, I turn my focus onto making a case for the advantages of using graphs to aid in classroom discussions of reading assignments. In the introductory discussion, I point out that one serious advantage that arises from Jocker\u27s macroanalysis is how the "R" algorithm produces a variety of graphs that provide visual reinforcement for the statistical data it generates. Consequently, in the second section of the essay, I provide a justification for why it would be advantageous in a college or even high school discussion of a reading assignment to privilege visual presentations of student responses to the assignment. Once I\u27ve established the nature of macroanalysis, and how challenging it is for the average English major, I offer an alternative approach to creating graphs to clarify student responses. This alternative approach is a blend of "sentiment analysis" and reader-response theory. Essentially this approach can be used to ease students toward the more serious graphing features of macroanalysis, or it can function as a self-contained form of analysis without shifting to the difficult mathematics characteristic of macroanalysis. To prepare the readers for the rather lengthy discussion of a graph produced by a group of Virginia Governor\u27s School students, I first provide a simple graph that shows my responses to the opening scene of Flannery O\u27Connor\u27s short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Having clarified how sentiment analyis, with the mechanical help of Microsoft Excel, can produce an engaging graph of emotional and intellectual responses that can be easily shared with the class, I then move to the last half of my essay--a detailed discussion of an actual student graph derived from a reading of Helen Klein Ross\u27s What Was Mine which was much more sophisticated than the graph I created for the O\u27Connor story. Even though the students\u27 graph was overly ambitious, the discussion of its visual dynamics demonstrate how even a faulty graph can teach students how to become close readers and appreciate the importance of analysis that is based on specific elements of the literature being analyzed
“Shakespeare is for Everyone”: Teaching Regional Productions through the Digital Performance Archive
No full textOver the past decade, local live productions of Shakespeare have become increasingly visible to scholars and audiences alike, both through critical work on the subject as well as through public projects such as Shakespeare on the Road. This visibility highlights the cultural and artistic work of regional theatre. On the one hand, local live productions celebrate regional culture through visual or aural appropriation: original music written by local artists, or an iconic building recreated in the set. On the other hand, these shows also expand and sometimes challenge our sense of Shakespeare’s work through these local appropriations. And yet, despite recent interest in local live productions, there is a curious lack of scholarship on how we might encourage students to understand and appreciate regional productions of Shakespeare.
This article explores one way to engage students in regional Shakespeare through discussing the Nashville Shakespeare Performance Archive, a student-curated online archive of local productions that has been a feature of Shakespeare classes at Belmont University in Nashville since 2016. Funded by a micro-grant from the Folger Institute, this project enables our students to collect artefacts from the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s annual performances and curate them into a suite of webpages each year that includes video footage, interviews, photos, musical scores, set models, costume sketches, and other elements of the production. This article overviews the early years of the project and explores a recent redesign that more directly challenged student assumptions about what constitutes a performance of “Shakespeare.”
Ultimately, this article makes the argument that a student-curated archive has the potential to slow students down in their encounters with local live theatre, helping them to identify a show’s contributions to local artistic identity and challenge their notion of Shakespearean "authenticity.
In Defense of Informal or Embodied Writing: A Note to Editors Half my Age
No full textThe author\u27s struggle with editorial intrusions is sketched, while working in Saudi Arabia into Puerto Rico. Submitting articles in rhet-comp and Creative Writing Studies, the author resisted editors\u27 demands that he produce an "impersonal" style. This spurred an investigation of authors who had carved out space for personal voice. This reflection seeks to historicize embodied writing, while aligning this process of "pushing back for voice" with the MLA\u27s re-definition of “Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies” as integrating five streams: creative writing, history and theory of rhetoric, history and theory of composition, literacy, and writing pedagogies
Bridging the Gap from the Performance-Based Classroom to Teaching Shakespeare at the Performance
No full textThe benefits of performance-based classroom approaches to teaching Shakespeare have been well-documented in pedagogical scholarship. This paper is an effort to push beyond the performance-based classroom and begin to incorporate ideas from the field of performance studies into a new pedagogical approach that capitalizes on my institution’s proximity to a resident ensemble Shakespeare theatre, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (CSC). I propose what I hope is a strong approach to teaching Shakespeare at the performance. Ultimately, this paper is about bridging the gap between performance-based in-class activities and in-person attendance at live performance, connecting these two experiences into a pedagogically cohesive and effective approach.
In this essay, I will outline a carefully scaffolded course design that prepares students to engage critically with Shakespeare at the performance, using both a series of preparatory readings and exercises, and a multiple post-performance engagement opportunities. The preparation includes performance-based classroom exercises; readings focused on theatrical reviews of early modern plays in performance; using performance to discuss and resolve textual cruxes; reading some introductory material about performance studies theory; and discussing the physical space of the theatre, with a particular focus on the local history and impact of CSC’s newly constructed theatre. Students will attend two live performances at CSC and a staged reading by the on-campus theatre department. After each of these events, they will complete post-performance assignments to help them engage critically with the experience of live theatre. They will write reflections that address the physical space of the theatre and the experience of being an audience member, analysis essays focused on specific moments in the performance that provide rich textual interpretation, and collaboratively-authored reviews of the performance. We will discuss in class the nuanced distinctions between attending live theatre and viewing filmed productions, and the different formats live theatre can take, from staged readings, to Shakespeare in the park, to full-scale theatrical productions. This aspirational course design will provide a test case for a pedagogical approach that combines performance-based classroom techniques with more advanced performance studies concepts and capitalizes upon access to live theatre. Through this kind of classroom approach and engagement, students will learn that theatre is a collaborative experience, and that audiences shape performance. They will gain an appreciation of the power of local theatre to make classical texts live anew and in locally meaningful ways. And they will learn a wide variety of new approaches to texts they may have previously struggled with interpreting
Teaching Shakespeare at the Live Cinema Broadcast
No full textSince the 2009 broadcast of the National Theatre’s production of Phèdre to cinemas worldwide, the availability of high-quality live theatre via digital relay has increased exponentially. Shakespeare has been a particular beneficiary of the explosion of live-streamed theatre, with productions initially broadcast direct to cinema screens, but increasingly available in schoolrooms, commercial DVD, and home computers, offering an invaluable pedagogic resource.
While much has been written about the aesthetic and technical properties of the live theatre broadcast as an art form, this article considers the affordances of the cinema broadcast as an event. Class excursions to a cinema offer a degree of similitude to trips to live in-person performance, replicating the qualities of collective viewing, ephemerality, and “eventness” which this article argues offer distinctive pedagogical opportunities. However, the unique conventions and grammars of the theatre broadcast require different analytical methods to in-person performance. This article, drawing on experience teaching cinema broadcasts on undergraduate and postgraduate modules, offers practical strategies for training students in reading theatre broadcasts in ways that preserve the eventness of the experience and help develop group literacy in the medium
New Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare with Live Theatre: Table of Contents
No full textThis document contains the table of contents for the roundtable titled New Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare with Live Theatre
Introduction: New Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare with Live Performance
No full textAn introduction to the Roundtable, "New Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare with Live Performance." This roundtable of essays aims to integrate recent trends in performance criticism with new approaches to performance pedagogies. The authors do this by focusing on teaching with live theatre. The essays are organized into three sections. Part 1, "Bridging Pedagogies" seeks to connect performance approaches with other established research and teaching trends, such as history of the book and recent trends in performance analysis. Part 2, "Local Shakespeare," focuses on innovative ways to integrate interactions with local Shakespeare companies into course planning and delivery. Part 3, "Mediated Theatre" focuses on integrating event cinema and recordings of live theatre productions in the classroom
New Encounters with an Old Course: Rethinking my Composition Course Approaches for a Highly Diverse Class
No full textIn this narrative, the author reflects on her experience of teaching a writing course to an extraordinarily diverse group of undergraduate writers. She highlights that the teaching experience allowed the class to negotiate writing practices and culturally-bound assumptions. The teaching of a highly diverse composition class reemphasized how important contextual consideration is, and how past experiences can hinder one’s ability to plan with an open mind
Live on Film! Recent Trends in Research and Teaching with Mediated Theatre
No full textThe purpose of this article is to provide an introductory survey of the field that might be called "mediated theatre studies"--that is, the study of recordings of theatrical performances. The survey has three parts. First, I chart broad trends in the research. Next, I review types and capabilities of some of the longer-running digital platforms. Finally, I plot the range of approaches to mediated theatre in existing pedagogical articles. Ultimately, the aim of this article is to help instructors to refine established, or develop new approaches to teaching with mediated theatre. In particular, where it seems relevant and helpful for students, I hope that this survey can help instructors to design courses that are not only informed by the now established discourse of performance criticism but also by specific questions and topics in mediated theatre studies