Autumn 2020
Prof. Sudha Shastri
Author: Khushi Gosalia
Course Content: The course is about exploring the adaptations and inspired creations of Shakespearean plays. In Autumn 2020, the class did 2 plays (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth) followed by their adaptations (Neil Gaiman’s comic strip of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Maqbool, a movie based on Macbeth). But generally the course has a minimum of 3 plays and their adaptations.
Motivation to take up the course: I love literature and wanted to explore it from a more analytical perspective rather than just reading for leisure.
Information about Projects/Assignments: All take home written assignment. Format was either essays, short answers or long answers.
Quizzes/Midsem/Endsem papers Difficulty: 4/5
Evaluation Structure: Continuous evaluation via take home assignments. No proctored exams but the checking is very strict and one needs to have a strong grasp of English grammar to be able to get a good score.
Lecture Style and Delivery: The classes are extremely engaging, the most I have seen in an online semester. If you attend classes it is easy to understand the course. The delivery was mainly live lectures with some recorded classes due to lack of time.
Attendance Policy: Online semester but attending classes was imperative to getting a decent grade.
References: The plays are available on MIT Open Courseware and the rest of the material is provided by the professor. —
General funda:
- Attending classes is very important.
- To excel in this course, an intermediate to advance understanding of the English language is essential along with the skill to write precisely.
- You need to read, analyze and discuss a lot throughout the course and assignments are based on that so keeping up with the material is another thing.
- The professor is very strict in terms of language usage so appreciating and keeping up with that is a task too.
Who can take this course?: Anyone(sophomores or higher) Anyone can take this course as long as you are interested in investing the time and sweat.