This course, framed as “Shakespeare, the Art and Science of Attention,” introduces Shakespeare’s major works and representative genres, including the English sonnet, narrative poem, occasional poem, comedy, tragedy, history, and romance. Through sustained attention to Shakespearean language, form, and performance, we will consider questions about cognition, artificial intelligence, creativity, and authorship against the backdrop of what may be the most radical textual revolution since Gutenberg’s printing press. Writing during a period of unprecedented technological change, Shakespeare staged the faculties of the mind and body—thinking, sensing, desiring, forgetting, dreaming, grieving—by dramatizing a cognitive ecology where thought emerges not only from the brain but also from the confluence of language, feeling, and the environment. Importantly, Shakespeare’s plays and poems occasion opportunities for us to practice our own cognitive skills, including memory, attention, and ethical reflection, so that we may more fully and responsibly engage multiple intelligences. English 1102 is a prerequisite for this course.
- Analyze Shakespeare’s works across multiple genres (sonnet, narrative poem, comedy, tragedy, history, romance, and occasional poem), identifying how genre shapes representations of cognition and affect.
- Practice sustained attention by engaging closely with Shakespeare’s language, demonstrating how meaning emerges through text, brain, and embodied experience.
- Interpret literary texts through cognitive frameworks, explaining how Shakespeare stages thinking, feeling, remembering, desiring, and grieving as processes distributed across bodies, environments, language, and social relations.
- Demonstrate memory, voice, and embodied understanding through recitation and performance, reflecting critically on how memorization and vocalization alter interpretation, comprehension, and affective engagement with texts.
- Evaluate the role of artificial intelligence in literary interpretation, assessing the accuracy, limitations, ethical implications, and environmental costs of generative AI tools when applied to Shakespearean scholarship.
- Collaborate productively in structured conversations and creative projects, practicing active listening, inclusive dialogue, and shared intellectual responsibility while engaging diverse perspectives.
- Shakespeare's Poems (ISBN 9781408143568)
- Titus Andronicus (IBSN 9781350030916)
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ISBN 9781408133491)
- The Tempest (ISBN 9781408139318)
- I Henry IV (ISBN 9781408142950)
Grading System: A (90 - 100), B (80 - 89), C (70 - 79), D (60-69), F (below 60)
- Participation (20%)
- Quizzes (5%)
- Facilitation (15%)
- Sonnet Cycle (10%)
- Recitation (10%)
- Midterm Exam (15%)
- Imitation (10%)
- Final Exam (15%)
Note: More specific instructions for assignments and grading rubrics will be posted on Canvas. If you have a question about the particulars of an assignment, course policy, or grade, please contact your instructor by email as soon as possible. Finally, please keep in mind that grades are not a judgment of your intelligence or value as a person. Assignments and exams provide opportunities to evaluate what you understand and where there is a need for more learning.
Attendance and active participation are essential to your success in this course. Because this course is grounded in close reading, performance, memory, and ethical interpretation, participation is not measured by how often or how loudly you speak, but by how attentively, thoughtfully, and responsibly you engage—with Shakespeare’s language, with your peers, and with your own habits of attention.This course is a collaborative learning community. Students are expected to come to class prepared, having completed the assigned readings, and ready to engage in discussion, close reading, recitation, performance, and reflective activities. Participation may take many forms: attentive listening, asking genuine questions, offering textual insights, reading aloud, contributing to small-group work, engaging in performance exercises, or sustaining moments of focused silence when the text calls for it.
Be mindful of the following course policies:
- Attendance: Regular attendance is expected. Please contact me as soon as possible if you have serious extenuating circumstances that affect your ability to attend class.
- Preparation: Students are required to bring the assigned text(s) to class, whether in physical or approved digital form. If you are unable to obtain a text due to financial hardship, please contact me as soon as possible.
- Technology: Cellular phones are not allowed in class. Laptops and tablets are permitted only for ADA accommodations or for clearly class-related purposes.
- Deadlines: All assignments must be submitted on time. Late submissions are not accepted.
Students are expected to act according to the highest ethical standards. The immediate objective of an Academic Honor Code is to prevent any Students from gaining an unfair advantage over other Students through academic misconduct. The following clarification of academic misconduct is taken from Section XIX Student Code of Conduct, of the Rules and Regulations section of the Georgia Institute of Technology General Catalog: Academic misconduct is any act that does or could improperly distort Student grades or other Student academic records. Such acts include but need not be limited to the following:
Unauthorized Access: Possessing, using, or exchanging improperly acquired written or verbal information in the preparation of a problem set, laboratory report, essay, examination, or other academic assignment.
Unauthorized Collaboration: Unauthorized interaction with another Student or Students in the fulfillment of academic requirements.
- Plagiarism: Submission of material that is wholly or substantially identical to that created or published by another person or persons, without adequate credit notations indicating the authorship.
- False Claims of Performance: False claims for work that has been submitted by a Student.
- Grade Alteration: Alteration of any academic grade or rating so as to obtain unearned academic credit.
- Deliberate Falsification: Deliberate falsification of a written or verbal statement of fact to a Faculty member and/or Institute Official, so as to obtain unearned academic credit.
- Forgery: Forgery, alteration, or misuse of any Institute document relating to the academic status of the Student.
- Distortion: Any act that distorts or could distort grades or other academic records.
While these acts constitute assured instances of academic misconduct, other acts of academic misconduct may be defined by the professor. The Honor Agreement may reappear on exams and other assignments to remind Students of their responsibilities under the Georgia Institute of Technology Academic Honor Code.
This is a Core IMPACTS course that is part of the Humanities area. Core IMPACTS refers to the core curriculum, which provides students with essential knowledge in foundational academic areas. This course will help master course content, and support students’ broad academic and career goals. This course should direct students toward a broad Orienting Question: How do I interpret the human experience through creative, linguistic, and philosophical works?
Completion of this course should enable students to meet the following Learning Outcome: Students will effectively analyze and interpret the meaning, cultural significance, and ethical implications of literary/philosophical texts or of works in the visual/performing arts.
Course content, activities and exercises in this course should help students develop the following Career-Ready Competencies: Ethical Reasoning; Information Literacy; Intercultural Competence.