[SOLD OUT] Reading Macbeth with Jim Casey | Virtual Course

Registration

• Tuition for this course is $250. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
• This course is limited to participants who are 18 years of age or older.
• Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email [email protected].
• Registration opens for Delancey Society on August 16, for Rosenbach members on August 23, and for the general public on August 30. 

Join Waitlist

Description 

Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy (barely more than half as long as Hamlet), but it features an abundance of unique and memorable moments, including the prophecies of the witches, the murder of the king, the appearance of the ghost, the confession of a sleepwalker, and the migration of a forest. The Macbeths are one of the most fascinating couples in western literature; their interaction, and the play’s complex depiction of the political, the psychological, and the supernatural, make Macbeth one of Shakespeare’s most quoted, performed, and adapted plays. This course will explore the richness and depth of this remarkable text, with close consideration of the work’s language, action, characterization, worldview, and more. Ideally, the course will be interactive, relying on class participation and free-flowing conversations that center on particular themes and passages. Every time we meet, we will practice a variety of reading techniques that will enable participants to begin experiencing Macbeth (and eventually all of Shakespeare’s plays) more deeply and effectively on their own, recognizing the playtext not only as a narrative but also as a poetic script that was meant to be performed out loud. 

Macbeth syllabus

About the Instructor

Dr. Jim Casey is a Fulbright Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities grant recipient, Past President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, editor of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen (2019), and co-editor of the collections Shakespeare/Not Shakespeare (2017) and Shakespeare and Comics (2024). Before retiring from full-time teaching in 2020, he taught more than 100 graduate and undergraduate courses over more than twenty years. Although primarily a Shakespearean, he has published peer-reviewed essays on such diverse topics as fantasy, monstrosity, early modern poetry, medieval poetry, pedagogy, textual theory, performance theory, postmodern theory, adaptation theory, digital humanities, old age, comics, film, anime, masculinity, grief, the supernatural, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Ovid, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica. His current projects include Shakespeare and Science Fiction, co-edited with Brandon Christopher (Arden Shakespeare) and Fantasy Literature through History (Bloomsbury). For the Rosenbach, Dr. Casey has previously led courses on Hamlet (2023) and Shakespeare and the Fantastic (2022).