The Image of Othello

This week in British Literature, we will begin our work with William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, Othello. In class today, we watched several short video clips that all focused on the issue of race and "blackness" in the play. We heard from literary critics, actors, professors and others who all offered opinions on whether the play is racist, whether Shakespeare was a racist, whether racism even existed at the time of the play's production, etc. What these questions prove in their multitude is that race certainly matters, regardless of how you answer any of those questions.

Above, I offer you six examples of posters created for various theatrical productions of Othello. Since the Brit Lit students are just jumping into the play for the very first time this week, I thought it would be interesting for them to reflect on what themes they see emerging simply based off of these images. Without knowing much, what do they think the play is about? How do the posters make them feel? Is there one that is particularly striking or thought provoking? 

Poetry in Motion

"I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty."
~ Edgar Allan Poe

While I love teaching poetry, I am keenly aware of the challenges it presents to students. One of my favorite poets, Billy Collins, maybe captures this concern best when he says, "People think of poetry as a school subject... poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover."

With those concerns in mind, in Brit Lit this week we are diving into British Renaissance Poetry. The language is (at times) antiquated, the ideas complex and the concerns may feel a bit trivial. At the same time, the poetry of this era is considered by many to be some of the best ever produced by mankind (although it is worth mentioning that we often focus these discussions on Western literature and completely ignore the poetry of other cultures and regions).

For this week's blog posts, I want students to reflect on why we study poetry in the first place. What things can poetry achieve that prose cannot. Poets like Shelley, Spenser and Milton all believed that the Poet had the power to change the world through his words. Do you believe this to be true? We all sort of chuckled when Spenser tries to convince his beloved that his poetry can make her immortal in "One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand" and yet here we are, nearly four-hundred years later, still reading his works. So tell me, students, is this a fruitless endeavor or is there still something to be learned from studying poetry?