Michael Manheim
Tuesdays 9:30-11:30 AM
March 23 through May, 11 2004
D.O.C. House
This will be the fifth in a series of courses dealing with Shakespeare on screen. We will see videotapes of three films of Othello, including versions performed by Laurence Olivier (with Maggie Smith), Anthony Hopkins (with Bob Hoskins), and Laurence Fishburne (with Kenneth Branagh). Finally, we will compare these videos of Othello with a video of Olivier's The Merchant of Venice to consider whether these are in any way racist plays. Alternative weeks will be devoted to class discussion of the texts of the plays and of the video seen the previous week.
Class is limited to 20 members.
Michael Manheim received his BA from Columbia in 1949, his MA in 1951, and his Ph.D. in 1961. He is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Toledo, where he lectured and conducted seminars in Shakespeare, modern drama, and the "great books," as well as chairing the English department and serving terms as dean of the humanities division and director of the M(A)LS program. He is past president of the Midwest MLA, the Ohio Shakespeare Conference, and the Eugene O'Neill Society. For the summer of 1972, he was invited to teach Shakespeare by the Dartmouth English department. He has also published books on Shakespeare and on early modern drama.
