Shakespeare on Film
Interim Project Report:
8 September 2001, Lisa McDonnell
I am now nearing the end of my grant work, and with the help of Anne Crowley-Hatton, Instructional Technologist, Star Andrews, Reserves Librarian, and especially Christian Faur, Digital Media Technologist, I have made significant progress in the past several weeks. I am now in the opening weeks of a course that students and I are enjoying very much, and not only do I have fresh perspectives on teaching but also some invigorating ideas for new scholarship.
With regards to the academic aspects of the course, I (since Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, Associate Professor, Kenyon College, has already submitted his interim report, I will write in the first person here, but obviously we shared many of these tasks) completed most of the work during the last academic year and this past summer. I looked at other people’s course plans for Shakespeare on Film on the internet and in books on teaching Shakespeare; ordered dozens of books on Shakespeare on Film and on teaching film from the Denison University Library, Consort, and Ohiolink; researched a critical corpus of films in literary and film journals and constructed a bibliography of pertinent articles; constructed a number of experimental syllabi; ordered a large number of new books for the library to support the course; ordered a large number of VHS cassettes of Shakespeare films (classic and contemporary, foreign and domestic, conservative and avant garde) for the course; ordered books and films for my own preparation for teaching the course; read and watched everything; constructed lecture and discussion sessions for the classes; and selected clips from the Shakespeare films for digitizing for classroom use.
On the technological side, I made good progress in the month preceding the opening of classes with extensive help from the three people listed above: (1) I implemented the use of Blackboard in the seminar, on which (so far) I have posted the schedule of assignments, film schedule, course policies, and list of textbooks, and made regular use of the email function to communicate with the class (the latter is great—quite a timesaver). I have even embellished my pages with color-coordinated buttons! I am very grateful to Anne Crowley-Hatton who came to my office and instructed me very pleasantly in the functions of this useful piece of software. (2) I set up Electronic Reserves (ERes) readings for my seminar with the kind help of Star Andrews. No one in my class had made use of this technology before, and everyone loved it; it provides such an easy and pleasant way to do reserve reading. So far, this technology has had a tremendous effect on classroom discussion, because the assignments are actually read! (3) I hired student employees and supervised them in the digitizing of film clips and, more excitingly to me, learned the basics of editing clips myself. I enjoyed the latter so much that the Digital Media Technologist had to remind me tactfully of the copyright and expense considerations as I was spinning grandiose plans to digitize dozens of film clips for all my Shakespeare courses!
Christian Faur, the new Digital Media Technologist, did an enormous amount of work in a short period of time (and, I am sure, under a great deal of pressure) that permitted Sergei and me to teach the courses at Kenyon and Denison this fall that we had envisioned at the beginning of summer. Frankly, I do not know what we would have done if he had not arrived and thrown himself so competently, enthusiastically, and generously into our project in his very first days in a new position at Denison. The most recent student employee and I had come to the end of our expertise with a group of clips that would not run in the electronic classroom and an iMac computer whose memory was completely exhausted by our efforts. To this day I could not tell you half the things Christian Faur did behind the scenes, which I really regret because I would like to give him credit for them here, but I do know that things like running compression programs and editing film and burning CDs were just a small part of the mix. In addition, he taught me to edit clips myself, instructed me in the use of the electronic classroom, taught me to run clips on my own computer (and added several instructions on computer use in general that have been extremely useful!), and helped me with difficulties I was experiencing in getting into the system in the E-classroom. He produced all work reliably, followed up on everything, and worked overtime on evenings and weekends to get our courses ready for the first day of class. Throughout the process, he demonstrated incredible expertise, generosity, patience, and kindness. Sergei and I will be eternally grateful to him.
I would also like to express our gratitude to the Director of Instructional Technology and the Mellon Grants here at Denison, Scott Siddall. He advised us helpfully on writing our grant proposal, acquainted us with different forms of technology to utilize in our course, kept us abreast of information and workshops on the topic, met with us several times to discern how best to enable our progress, served as a patient and willing listener when we had problems, and encouraged us in the most enthusiastic and interesting way. He was especially kindly about making sure that I, the technophobe of the duo, understood the new technology he was introducing us to and, as a result, I have developed a genuine interest in the technology we explored. I am grateful to him for championing our proposal to the selection committee, and I am especially grateful to him for his warmth and enthusiasm throughout the project. When I considered applying for the grant, I was unsure that I even wanted to embark upon a course “saddled” with technology; halfway through our work I applied for another grant to explore additional forms of technology.
So this grant seems to be accomplishing at least one of its purposes very well, indeed: to encourage (reluctant?) faculty to explore technology and utilize it in the classroom. Thank you very much, Mellon Foundation, for giving us this extremely interesting opportunity to explore the exponentially expanding world of technology with an eye to its benefits to the classroom.
Lisa McDonnell, Denison University