This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

Calendar

SES # TOPICS KEY DATES
1 Introduction  
2 Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. (1966/7) Watch the film of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (dir. Tom Stoppard)
3 Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. (1966/7) (cont.) Report on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in relation to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
4 Stoppard. The Real Inspector Hound. (1969/70) Watch the film of The Importance of Being Earnest
5 Stoppard. Travesties. (1975) Response essay 1
6 Stoppard. Travesties. (1975) (cont.) Reports on James Joyce, Dadaism, and Lenin
7 Churchill. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire. (1976)  
8 Churchill. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire. (1976) (cont.) Report on The Levellers (drawing on the historical work of Christopher Hill)
9 Churchill. Cloud 9. (1979/84 rev. version) Response essay 2
10 Churchill. Cloud 9. (1979/84 rev. version) (cont.) Report on British colonialism in Africa and Ireland. Report on Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish
11 Churchill. Top Girls. (1982) Response essay 3

Watch the video of Top Girls
12 Churchill. Top Girls. (1982) (cont.) Report on feminist performance theory
    Work on essay
13 Stoppard. The Real Thing. (1982) Report on John Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore
14 Churchill. Serious Money. (1987) Five-page essay due
15 Churchill. Serious Money. (1987) (cont.)  
16 Stoppard. Hapgood. (1988)  
17 Stoppard. Hapgood. (1988) (cont.)  
18 Churchill. Mad Forest. (1990) Paper abstract/prospectus/outline due

Report on twentieth-century Romanian political history
19 Churchill. Mad Forest. (1990) (cont.)  
20 Stoppard. Arcadia. (1993) Report on George Gordon, Lord Byron, and Romanticism
21 Stoppard. Arcadia. (1993) (cont.) Report on images of Arcadia and the history of landscape gardening (with reference to Raymond Williams' The Country and the City)
22 Stoppard. The Invention of Love. (1997) Report on A. E. Housman's The Shropshire Lad; the criticism of Ruskin and Pater
23 Stoppard. The Invention of Love. (1997) (cont.) Report on the homosexuality statutes and the trial of Oscar Wilde
24 Student Paper Presentations Final paper due