As the world changes, so do the ways in which art is created and consumed. In response, this course will entail equal parts exploration and innovation. Students will survey emerging techniques and consider the ways in which technology can be utilized in storytelling projects, and then apply those techniques toward new ways of telling their own stories.

In this class we’ll examine how contemporary Irish literature and film conserves, critiques, and rewrites the past. As Emilie Pine notes in The Politics of Irish Memory, the Irish obsession with the past has been creating “alternate and more complex narratives” that explore memories “that were for too long ‘forgotten,’ or sidelined, by Irish history and culture.”  Particularly vexed have been such national traumas as the 1920s civil war, the violent Republican and Loyalist conflicts preceding the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the notorious scandals connected with the Catholic church, and the economic downturn that followed the heady era of the “Celtic tiger.”  And yet, culture is ever-evolving.  In light of the Marriage Equality Act (2015) and a liberalizing trend in legal and social arenas, we’ll think about new ways to imagine “Irishness,” taking up fresh work by recent writers who, as Lucy Caldwell puts it, want to “experiment with and to embrace pluralities, contradictory ways of being.”

Under the headings of “Revolution, Civil War, and Memory,” “Men, Women, and the Church,” “Mythology, Fantasy, and Language,” and “Nostalgia, the Crash, and New Histories,” we’ll study such writers as Flann O’Brien, Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Edna O’Brien, Colm Tóibín, Clare Keegan, Kevin Barry, Eimear McBride, Sally Rooney, and Yan Ge.  We’ll also screen such films as The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006; Ken Loach), Bloody Sunday (2002; Paul Greengrass), Breakfast on Pluto (2005; Neil Jordan); The Magdalene Sisters (2002; Peter Mullen), Six Shooter (2004; Martin McDonagh), The Guard (2011; John Michael McDonagh), and Rose Plays Julie (2019; Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor).

 This writing Intensive course fulfills the diversity requirement for the B.A. in English Teaching at UNH Manchester, as well as the Theory/ Poetics requirement for the Literary Studies option within the Literary Arts & Studies / English studies major.

This class acknowledges the critical importance of Shakespeare's works as cultural documents. By examining a selection of his dramatic works in the context of literary, cinematic, and graphic novel adaptations, we'll see that these plays have had a profound influence on other writers and artists over the centuries.

Comics, films, and literature have all been inspired by Shakespeare's dramatic works. In this class we will explore these inspirations, as well as the originals from which they are created. We'll analyze four Shakespeare plays--The Taming of the Shrew; Othello; Macbeth; and The Tempest--as a work in and of itself, looking at the ways in which Shakespeare has handled characterization, dramatic plotting, language, and a series of other literary techniques. We'll then move on to an analysis of films, comic books, and literary adaptations of these Shakespearean dramas. They'll be either clear "rewritings" of the plays, showing strong adherence to the original, or they'll be quite free versions of the plays, showing some echoes or inspirations from Shakespeare, but demonstrating their authors' own visions of characterization, plot, and theme. By the end of the semester, we should have a heightened appreciation not only for the original Shakespeare plays, but also for the ways in which filmmakers, comic book artists and other playwrights have harnessed Shakespeare's vision and made it their own.

Course fulfills pre-1800 requirement for English, English Teaching, and LS majors. It is Writing Intensive.