ENGL 295A: Brand New Ancients

When they excavate the modern day They’ll find us, The Brand New Ancients. -Kate Tempest Course Description: London-based hip-hop artist Kate Tempest has described her generation of Londoners as “Brand New Ancients”—obsessed by myth, trying to make life “brand new” out of the material of the past. This course will be guided by that project: we’ll explore Britain’s past as it lives in London today in its architecture, museums, book readings, and culture, while also taking advantage of our own location in present-day London to see what forms “newness” takes in music, theatre, literature, the visual arts, the sciences, politics, and other forms of life (this might even include the new Harry Potter play). We, like Tempest, will reject the notions that high art can be separated from popular culture, that art can be sequestered from politics, that the past can be ignored or forgotten in the present. From there, we’ll use all of the considerable opportunities London offers to figure out what it means to be Brand New Ancients in Britain today.

Course Goals: 1) To give students the opportunity to prepare for arrival in London through pre-trip reading and research-based writing. 2) To familiarize students with the geography of London. 3) To allow students opportunities to explore the ways in which London’s present is informed by its history, not least as the center of a global empire. 4) To give students an overview of the arts in Britain/London today. 5) To teach students to make connections between the arts and contemporary cultural contexts from which they emerge.

Possible Course Texts: 1-2 contemporary plays; Bernardina Evaristo, The Emperor’s Babe; Tom McCarthy, Satin Island; Ali Smith, Autumn; Zadie Smith, NW; Kate Tempest, Brand New Ancients; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland; Patience Agbabi, Telling Tales; poems by Wilfred Owen; some short pieces of cultural and literary criticism.

ENGL310: Studies in Genre: Classical and Contemporary Drama in Performance Course Descriptions: Our texts and activities will focus on reading and attending performances of plays being staged in London during our trip (consequently, there cannot yet be a reading list for this class more specific than “Shakespeare and other things”—it’s entirely up to London to tell us what we’ll read). We’ll see a range plays (and likely dance performances and/or opera) at a variety of venues, from the monumental Royal National Theatre and Royal Opera House to newer experimental shows at the Bush Theatre, Barbican, and Almeida. We’ll attend talks about some of the works and tour some of the historic venues, and will also take a day trip to Stratford-upon- Avon to see the birthplace of Shakespeare and a performance of one (or more) of his plays.

Course Goals: 1) To give students the opportunity to see top-notch contemporary performances from some of the most famous companies in the world. 2) To look at contemporary stagings of classical plays in order to examine the relevance of classical texts to today’s theater. 3) To give students the opportunity to analyze plays in performance, in addition to analyzing the texts of plays, and to make connections between text and performance. 4) To familiarize students with different genres of writing about theater: textual analysis, dramaturgical work, and formal and informal reviews.

ENGL294: practicum: 1-credit pre-trip course, Spring 2018 Course Description: This course will act as an orientation to the work we’ll be doing in London. This will include practical orientation (vaccinations, visas, travel safety, etc.) and an overview of the reading/written work that students will be expected to complete by the time they arrive in London.

Study Abroad Program Outline The following splits the time in London into five thematic units, with possible activities/destinations for each to consider alongside our course readings (to be revised as museum and theater listings for summer 2018 are published). This will give you an idea of the places we might visit and incorporate into our course work each week.

London Week One-Two: Welcome to London: Roman Origins to Renaissance London  Activities: The Museum of London, The Tower of London/Tower Bridge, Shakespeare’s Globe and sites from Roman London (The Guildhall), the British Library (Magna Carta), Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament

Week Two: 2018 Centenaries: Demonstrations, Suffrage, and WWI  Activities: National Archives at Kew, Kew Gardens (evening event), The Imperial War Museum, Hyde Park/Trafalgar Square, Suffrage and War Monuments, National Portrait Gallery, Natural Science Museum, The Victorian and Albert Museum, Persephone Books  Week Three: London through Its Theaters  Activities: Soho, National Theatre, Old Vic/Young Vic, Barbican Centre, Almeida, Bush Theatre, an open air performance, Royal Opera House/Covent Garden, Branagh Theatre Company, something West End/Harry Potter

Week Four: Further Afield  Activities: Blackheath/Greenwich Observatory, the Museum of London Docklands, Kew Gardens (if not in week two), Stratford-upon-Avon, Kenwood, small and strange museums/centers/private collections/public cemeteries explored on their own (summer series at the Abney Park cemetery)  Texts: Bernardine Evaristo, Mr. Loverman, Shakespeare

Week Five: Brand New (Ancient) London  Activities:, Saatchi Gallery, Camden Arts Center, British Museum, Shoreditch, Brixon/Notting Hill Black history walks and Jazz at Efra Hall Tavern, Docklands Museum (if not covered week 4), Tate Modern, The Shard and recent architecture, a concert (this week will depend most on current events in London)