CONTEMPORARY SHAKESPEARE - 2025/6

Module Overview

This module introduces students to a range of creative and critical strands and debates related to contemporary Shakespearean performance. These may include global and intercultural Shakespeare, adaptations on stage and screen, applied Shakespeare, gender - and colour-blind Shakespeare, cultural politics and ethics. Drawing on relevant critical debates on how and why Shakespeare is performed today within diverse and multicultural societies, students will be able to engage with case-studies of UK and international productions and artists. The module will pay attention to key terms such as diversity, diaspora, hybridity and inclusivity and enable students to draw on these in informed critical analysis and discussion.

Module provider

Literature & Languages

Module Leader

SHAUGHNESSY Robert (GSA)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 6

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 1

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes:

• Applied Shakespeare


• Global and intercultural Shakespeare


• Adapted Shakespeare, stage and screen


• Contemporary cultural politics

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of contemporary creative and critical strands related to contemporary Shakespeare performance through detailed and informed analysis of case-studies.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

An edited scene from a Shakespeare play, annotated in terms of its recent stage and screen history.

Formative assessment

Students will receive continuous formative feedback throughout the module and a session towards the end of the term will be dedicated individual tutorials to discuss feedback and further directions for the edited scene.

Feedback

See above

Module aims

• The module aims to: provide students with an overview of the diverse strands within contemporary Shakespeare performance and scholarship
• enable students to consider and engage critically with key terms and case-studies related to contemporary Shakespeare in the UK and internationally
• enable students to analyse performances and cultural events, such as festivals, with attention to contemporary cultural, political and academic debates, and with regard to issues of equality, diversity, inclusion and access

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

* enhance knowledge and understanding of audiences and critical approaches to audiences
* develop analytical and evaluative skills in reading Shakespearean and other playtexts, performances and screen media
* foster an enhanced understanding of the relationships between Shakespearean writings and their contexts
* enable students to be aware of and draw on a broad range of methodologies and understandings of Shakespeare’s writing in creating their own rigorous and informed arguments;
* encourage interdisciplinarity
* develop confidence in articulating ideas in both written and spoken form; and to promote a collegiate and supportive learning environment as a means of fostering disciplined and scholarly debate.


Indicative learning and teaching methods include: lecture/seminars, writing workshops, screenings, peer-to-peer learning, debates and independent research and reflection.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: ELI3063

Other information

Surrey's Curriculum Framework is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This module is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills and capabilities in the following areas:

Digital Capabilities: students access a range of digital materials relevant to Shakespearean scholarship, adaptation and performance, which range across media from online text resources to performance platforms and archives. As well as learning to engage critically and creatively with existing materials, students are offered opportunities to intervene imaginatively in this domain, transferring their own digital literacies across subject boundaries and reshaping our collective understanding of the relations between texts, performances and media.

Employability: students learn the key components of analysing and responding creatively to the works of Shakespeare and their diverse cultural afterlife, equipping them with them the knowledge and skills for employment in a wide range of environments. Shakespeare acts as a hub discipline, in the sense that it interconnects with the concerns of the arts, the human sciences and the science, providing a platform and a conversation space for strikingly diverse interlocutors, and is a touchstone for innovative thinking, creative originality, and collective endeavor.

Global and Cultural Capabilities: Shakespeare is by nature global and intercultural, and the module includes important reworkings and reinventions of the works beyond the Anglosphere (e.g. Bollywood film adaptations), Students are encouraged to bring their own cultures and cultural experiences into the context of the classroom and to bring examples of Shakespearean writing that reflect their own backgrounds, cultures and experience

Resourcefulness and Resilience: Shakespeare’s works and their global legacy, as well as the diverse creative responses they have inspired, provide a universally-recognised – and sometime contested – resource for the consideration of the deepest and most challenging questions of what makes us human. In terms of the assessment outputs, resourcefulness is developed through understanding and creating works that are published/ publishable and this is reinforced by a chance to discuss development with two published authors.

Sustainability: as an endlessly recyclable resource, Shakespeare is a paradigm of cultural sustainability, frequently acting as a cornerstone of national culture and self-understanding that is embedded within ideas of continuity and sustainable tradition, even as it is repeatedly subjected to reinvention, revision and interrogation.  The theatre and media industries have also engaged with Shakespeare as a material resource in ways that have been both profligate and parsimonious and the module engages the more immediate question of how to create less wasteful and more environmentally responsible theatre is a key consideration in relation the contemporary stage.  

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.