ENGL 51.04 Stories At the Edge of the World: Conquest and Contact in the Age of Shakespeare

When did the world become global? Living an age of commerce and contact, the writers of Shakespeare's England were also diplomats, explorers, soldiers, colonizers, and cosmopolitans. They composed poems and plays with one hand and foreign dispatches with the other, each time wondering at the encounters and tensions of a rapidly expanding world. In this course, we'll explore stories of borderlands, wildernesses, colonies, voyages, and migration. As we read widely in literature and travel narratives—including Shakespeare's defense of refugees from the forgotten play, Sir Thomas More—we'll consider what these borderlands and exchanges offer the early modern imagination and what they looked like in reality. Along the way, we'll be challenged to consider how we tell stories about marginalized people and contested spaces in our own rapidly globalizing time. 

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

The Timetable of Class Meetings contains the most up-to-date information about a course. It includes not only the meeting time and instructor, but also its official distributive and/or world culture designation. This information supersedes any information you may see elsewhere, to include what may appear in this ORC/Catalog or on a department/program website. Note that course attributes may change term to term therefore those in effect are those (only) during the term in which you enroll in the course.

Department-Specific Course Categories

Course Group I