Tomorrow my students are presenting their final group projects on Titus Andronicus. They pitched the projects to me in class last week, and some of them sound fantastic. Most of the students came up with some really interesting – and sometimes unexpected – takes on themes and characters, and how they should be considered in light of current issues and trends. [Read more…] about Wrestling Titus – The Final Takedown
Wrestling with Titus – Round Two
What a difference reading a few blog posts and in-class discussion makes! After my disheartened post of Sunday I went back and read through a number of the course blog posts and comments that students posted last week regarding their reactions to watching Titus and its relation to their experiences reading Titus Andronicus. Their observations were thoughtful, insightful, and while most were still skittish about the representations of violence many were able to transcend that and consider why Taymor had pushed the violence to an almost cartoon-like level.
Wrestling with Titus
My students have been working their way through Titus Andronicus over the past two weeks. I knew it was ambitious to tackle that play with first-year students who do not, on the whole, express any real enthusiasm for early modern drama. There have been successes so far, most notably their reaction to seeing a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I’ve written about in TECHStyle. But teaching Titus has been another story.