Shakespeare in MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses), and other Online Presences

FutureLearn is a MOOC that has featured free Shakespeare courses among others. Recently concluded is "Shakespeare and His World" featuring ten weeks of video lectures by Jonathan Bate. Eight of Shakespeare's plays are examined, and each week also focuses on some aspect Shakespeare's life and of England during his time. Though the course is over as far as Bate's active participation is concerned, it remains available online, and some student discussions are continuing. It no longer appears in the list of courses, but it can be found HERE. One needs to register first. I understand that this is the second time this course has been offered, so perhaps it will be offered again. Based on numerous comments from participants and my own reaction, it is highly recommended.

Two additional Shakespeare courses are coming up; "Shakespeare's Hamlet: Text, Performance and Culture," 6-weeks starting January 19, and "Much Ado about Nothing: in Performance," 4-weeks starting March 2.

The 10-week FutureLearn MOOC course, Shakespeare and his World, is beginning again starting April 18. Information can be found here.

Here's another free on-line course, "Shakespeare: Print and Performance," from the British Library:
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/shakespeare?ns_campaign=mooc&ns_mchannel...

Another free on-line course, as it happens it's taught by LTer Matteo Pangallo

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/professional-graduate/courses/shakespeare-and-race

Beginning Monday, September 19, FutureLearn is beginning a 4-week course titled Much Ado About Nothing: In Performance. This is the second iteration of this course and features film clips of a Royal Shakespeare Company production of what they chose to call Love's Labour's Won, an alternative title some scholars think Much Ado may have had.

FutureLearn has two Shakespeare courses scheduled to start soon:

Feb. 27: Exploring English: Shakespeare (6 weeks) is designed for English language learners and provides basic information about the life and works of the greatest writer in the English language.

Mar. 20: Shakespeare and His World (10 weeks) is an in-depth look at the Bard, his times, and 8 of his plays, conducted by Prof. Jonathan Bate in cooperation with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Previous runs of the course have received high praise.

The links provide further information and an opportunity to sign up for the courses.

There are two other FutureLearn Shakespeare courses whose start dates are yet to be determined. The links provide further information and an opportunity to register an interest in the courses. E-mail notifications will be sent when the courses are scheduled.

-- Shakespeare: Print and Performance -and-
-- Shakespeare's Hamlet: Text, Performance and Culture

Free live stream of Cheek by Jowl Theatre's 'The Winter's Tale' begins Apr 19:
http://www.cheekbyjowl.com/livestream

FutureLearn is rerunning another of its Shakespeare courses beginning Oct. 23. Shakespeare: Print and Performance is a 4-week course.

Interesting online discussion on Youtube by LTer Brett Greatley-Hirsch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrL_acrZtDE

SEGMENTS:
0:00:00​ - Intro
0:03:05​ - Digital Renaissance Editions (DRE)
0:06:35​ - Annotations, humor, other editorial challenges
0:11:00​ - Maintaining interest in the full body of early modern drama
0:13:20​ - Inclusivity and making the unfamiliar familiar
0:15:15​ - History of reproducing English Renaissance dramatic canon
0:20:00​ - The costs of digital publishing and funding digital projects
0:22:10​ - Sustainability / digital cathedrals / LEMDO / The Endings Project
0:29:32​ - Computational stylistics / attribution
0:39:55​ - Shakespeare authorship and collaboration
0:46:57​ - Penalties for offending the wrong people from the stage
0:49:54​ - Editing John Day (playwright) / John Day as non-exceptional
0:55:15​ - The eruption of the theatre scene in the Elizabethan period
0:55:55​ - Brett's literary criticism / religion / witchcraft / court dramas / owls
1:01:50​ - Brett's cultural and academic background / Chris Wortham
1:06:15​ - What we miss as teachers / active learning with old printing presses
1:13:24​ - Scholarship in Australia and New Zealand
1:19:15​ - Closing remarks / Bibles / Aoyama Gakuin and the Folger

Free online course: Shakespeare's Language: Revealing Meanings and Exploring Myths.
Demystify renowned Shakespeare myths and get introduced to corpus-based methods for analysing his use of language in context.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/shakespeares-language?fbclid=IwAR2hUTzVWLQw7...

https://www.shaksper.net/current-postings/34231-season-1-speaking-of-shakespeare...

Season 1 of “Speaking of Shakespeare” is now fully available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, and other services that can be accessed at https://speakingofshakespeare.buzzsprout.com.

These podcasts feature conversations with authors of new books, performers, digital developers, archivists, and others involved in things Shakespearean. The series is also available for viewing on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpeakingofShakespeare.

(thanks to Thomas Dabbs)

>12 Crypto-Willobie: Thanks for posting that. In scanning the list of past podcasts, I quickly spotted the name of one of my favorite authors, Tiffany Stern.

This may be old news, but the Folger Shakespeare Library has its own long-running series of Shakespeare-oriented podcasts called Shakespeare Unlimited. It is worth checking out.

Tiffany is a super-star!

shaksper@shaksper.net
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Announcements
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From: Thomas Dabbs

Date: October 21, 2021 at 4:33 PM EDT

Subject: Speaking of Shakespeare: Roze Hentschell

https://www.shaksper.net/current-postings/34250-speaking-of-shakespeare-roze-hen...

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This is a talk with Roze Hentschell about her recent book (Oxford UP) on the environs of St Pauls cathedral and precinct, including bookshops, in London during Shakespeare’s time. The talk is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BdTXq7PQKak. It is also available from various podcast services at: https://speakingofshakespeare.buzzsprout.com.

Best regards,

Thomas Dabbs

From: Thomas Dabbs
Date: December 19, 2021 at 8:33 PM EST
Subject: Virtual St Paul’s Project: A Talk with John Wall

This is a talk with John Wall of North Carolina State University about the completion of the Virtual St Paul’s Cathedral Project. This project is a digital reconstruction of St Paul’s Cathedral in London during the time of John Donne and Shakespeare. It provides architectural and acoustic models for Christian worship in the early decades of the Church of England and also a view of the nave and bookshops of Paul’s Cross Churchyard, where Londoners came to hear the news and to shop:

https://youtu.be/79WgvX9GbEw

There is also a 3-minute visual example in which the acoustics are also featured at:

https://youtu.be/qDrJFJtGXZY

>16 Crypto-Willobie: Very interesting! When I first went to The Virtual St Paul’s Cathedral Project's web site, I couldn't access some of the 360 degree panoramic views. They seem to be working, now, though. The site is loaded with information. Thank you for posting this.

>16 Crypto-Willobie: TY So interesting!

Lena Cowen Orlin on "The Private Life of William Shakespeare"
https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/private-life-shakespeare-orlin?fbcl...

This is a talk with James Shapiro of Columbia University, mostly about his recent book, ’Shakespeare in a Divided America’. He is also the author of books on Shakespeare’s life and times, antisemitism in Shakespeare, and the Shakespearean authorship (non) question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldoi4P6-sIA

>20 Crypto-Willobie: That book goes on my WL!

From: Thomas Dabbs
Date: January 28, 2022 at 7:26 AM EST
Subject: Speaking of Shakespeare: Lena Cowen Orlin

This is a talk with Lena Cowen Orlin of Georgetown University about her new book, The Private Life of William Shakespeare, and about other areas of her research, including her findings on Tudor homes and her detailed recovery of day-to-day life during Shakespeare’s time: https://youtu.be/BfyVtqjNERs.

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Notification of two new articles

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 32.335 Friday, 28 January 2022
From: Paul Brown
Date: January 27, 2022 at 4:40 PM EST
Subject: Notification of two new articles

SHAKSPERians might be interested in the publication of the following:

1)
Gabriel Egan’s self-published review of scholarly publications in the field of Shakespearian editions and textual studies is called ‘Not the Year’s Work in English Studies’, and it continues the reviewing that he did for ‘The Year’s Work in English Studies’ (for Oxford University Press) from 2000 to 2016. This review, abbreviated to NYWES, appears at:
http://gabrielegan.com/nywes
The review for 2018 has just been published there, alongside links for NYWES for 2015 to 2017 and YWES for 1999 to 2014.

2)
The journal ‘Digital Scholarship in the Humanities’ has published in Advance Access a new article called “How the Word Adjacency Network algorithm works” by Paul Brown, Mark Eisen, Santiago Segarra, Alejandro Ribeiro, and Gabriel Egan. The abstract reads:

The Word Adjacency Network (WAN) method is a newly invented method for attributing the authorship of texts based on internal evidence about the proximities of high-frequency words in those texts. The method has been the subject of mathematically rigorous explanations in scientific journals and here is offered instead a relatively non-technical account for humanist readers unfamiliar with advanced mathematical nomenclature. The description refers to the operation of the algorithm as it is implemented in a newly completed open-source, open-access version that the authors have made available for free unlimited download on the World Wide Web.

The software described in this article is freely available as Python source code at
http://gabrielegan.com/WAN
If any SHAKSPERian does not have access to the journal ‘Digital Scholarship in the Humanities’ and would like a copy of the article, they can get it by asking Gabriel Egan directly at .

a newly invented method for attributing the authorship of texts

Can of worms!

These folks have credentials, especially Gabriel Egan. Not that their methods cant' be criticized, but they won;t be chasing their nonsensical tail...

The approach sounds similar to what was being talked about in the recent Shakespeare's Language MOOC from Lancaster University based on their CQPweb database/search tool.

Stephen Greenblatt: Speaking of Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 33.155 Sunday, 12 June 2022
From: Thomas Dabbs
Date: June 12, 2022 at 7:10 AM EDT
Subject: Stephen Greenblatt: Speaking of Shakespeare

This is a talk with Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard University about his work on Shakespeare and about other areas of human consciousness: https://youtu.be/5bE7LYRO_6M

Best regards,
Tom

This news isn't quite the same as a MOOC, but The Teaching Company, a producer of video education courses, has just announced a new Shakespeare course; Experiencing Shakespeare: From Page to Stage.

"In 12 riveting lessons, gain access to the behind-the-scenes secrets that master actors use to bring Shakespeare's plays to life."

Though I haven't seen it yet, it looks promising.

Lost Plays from Shakespeare's world:

https://www.cassidycash.com/lost-plays-and-how-historians-find-them-again/?fbcli...

>29 Crypto-Willobie: Interesting!