English 607 Topic 53 - The Site Specific Text
Winter 2010
Wednesday 10:00 am - 12:30 pm
Instructor: Dr. Susan Bennett sbennett [at] ucalgary [dot] ca
Course Description:
This course will examine a range of theoretical investigations concerned with site specificity so as to consider how texts understand, cite, and shape the environments in which they appear. As well, the seminar will address ideas of the text as a site of memory, as an agent in the social circulation of the past.
The class will work closely, then, with a range of theoretical approaches but will also provide students with an opportunity to engage this material alongside a primary text of their own selection. I would anticipate each student choosing a text relevant to a thesis research area or from a proposed major/minor field, but selection is open. As a model for the scope of this work, I will draw on my research for "The Osborne Project" to demonstrate how reading that manuscript in the context of contemporary thinking about site specificity shifts the parameters for critical analysis.
Students will have the opportunity to attend a conference planned by the Osborne Project research team for February 2010 (hosted by the Calgary Institute for the Humanities) where "site specificity" will be one of two trajectories explored by leading national and international scholars working in medieval and early modern drama and performance. Notwithstanding the focus of the conference, I should emphasize that students will be able to undertake research on a text from any period/location.
Tentative Reading List:
Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989).
Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction (Blackwell, 2004).
Hodge, Stephen. A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (Wrights & Sites, 2006).
Pearson, Mike. In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape (U of Exeter P, 2007)
Tentative Assignment List:
Class presentation 25%
Class response paper 15% --these first two assignments will be based on the theory texts that we will read together.
Research assignment on student-selected text:
Backgrounder (presentation on selected text in context of a site specific approach) 15%
Final research paper 45%
Current Research in Relevant Areas:
As noted above, this course is drawn from the emphasis of my current research in "The Osborne Project," working specifically with that playtext but abstracting into the broader field of early modern performance to look at the intersections of text, site, and memory.
I am an invited participant at the 2009 Shakespeare Association of America annual conference for a seminar "Sites of Performance/Sites of Memory" where I will prepare a 3,000-word paper entitled "Performing Environments." This addresses contemporary performance studies interest in and commitment to site specificity so as to suggest new approaches for thinking about texts in the earlier period. Ideas from cultural geography and about site specificity are rapidly becoming very influential for new research in early modern dramatic studies and a co-edited volume (Bennett, Polito) on this topic is a planned outcome of the February 2010 conference.
