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Shakespeare is at the core of the research and teaching of many faculty at Notre Dame and his plays and poems figure largely in the work of many others. Below are some of their many courses which explore aspects of his plays in the Department of English and Department of Film, Television, and Theatre.
 
There is nothing in the least surprising in that. Ever since literary study formed part of university education—and especially a liberal arts education—in the United States, Shakespeare has been seen as a central figure for our understanding of the human imagination and of the ways in which his works address the concerns central to our lives: the nature of love, the way power operates, the possibility of evil, the organization of the state, the meanings we give to history, the understanding of race, the concept of morality, and, of course, the manifold other opportunities great writing provides to make us rethink who we are and what we might be.
 
Notre Dame faculty study and teach Shakespeare in every imaginable way—and some ways that might surprise: we examine his plays in performance on stage and film, on television and the web, on radio and the iPad; we write about his relationship to the complexities of early modern printing and of early modern religion; we explore his drama in America and Japan, in England and South Africa; we seek to come to a better sense of the ways in which his works have been used by many different political positions and what they might have meant in his own time.
 
No dramatist makes us think harder or with greater pleasure, no writer gives such various delight and makes such intense demands, no poet proves so satisfying even as he asks for our complete engagement in the profound and complex worlds his lines create.
 

Peter Holland

McMeel Family Professor of Shakespeare Studies
Associate Dean for the Arts
Profile

Representative Courses:
ENGL 40206 - Shakespeare and Film
ENGL 90257 - Shakespeare: Editing & Performing

 

Jesse Lander

Thomas J. and Robert T. Rolfs Associate Professor of English
Department of English
Profile

Representative Courses:
ENGL 13186: 03 - University Literature Seminar Shakespeare’s Major Tragedies
ENGL 40227 - Shakespeare II

Susannah Monta

John Cardinal O'Hara, C.S.C., and Glynn Family Honors Associate Professor
Department of English
Profile

Representative Course:
ENGL 40234 - The Renaissance Imagination: Thinking with Shakespeare and Spenser

Siiri Scott

Professional Specialist
Department of Film, Television, and Theatre
Profile

Representative Course:
FTT 41005-01 - Acting Shakespeare

Elliott Visconsi

Associate Professor
Director, Graduate Studies in English
Department of English
Profile

Representative Course:
ENGL 40244 - Shakespeare and Political Theory