{"id":8021,"date":"2016-04-04T07:30:08","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T14:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/?p=8021"},"modified":"2016-04-04T14:09:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T21:09:24","slug":"celebrating-shakespeare-who-is-allowed-to-be-the-custodian-of-knowledge-by-autumn-raw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/celebrating-shakespeare-who-is-allowed-to-be-the-custodian-of-knowledge-by-autumn-raw\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Shakespeare: Who Is Allowed To Be the Custodian of Knowledge? By Autumn Raw"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/files\/2016\/03\/BIGCALLOUT_Shakespeare.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-7999\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/files\/2016\/03\/BIGCALLOUT_Shakespeare.jpg\" alt=\"BIGCALLOUT_Shakespeare\" width=\"461\" height=\"215\" \/><\/a><em>In honor of William Shakespeare we are celebrating the 400th anniversary of his death on April 23, 2016. What better way to do this, than by highlighting the writing done by first-year students in Associate Professor of English John Wesley\u2019s first-year seminar, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare? This first-year seminar in scholarly inquiry studies four remarkable plays Shakespeare wrote or saw into production in 1599, the same year he opened the Globe Theatre. In the first half of the course, students were introduced to the myriad ways in which Shakespeare\u2019s 1599 plays are shaped by and give shape to the political and cultural intrigues of that year. In the second half of the course, students turned to a play (and year) of their own choosing, the historicist analysis of which is the basis of an independent research project. As part of this project, students were asked to prepare a blog post that reflected on aspects of Shakespeare&#8217;s life, a specific work, or a resource or organization associated with Shakespeare, or to provide a personal interpretation of a play. During the month of April, we\u2019ll feature the posts from students that celebrate all things Shakespeare!<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Congratulations to our wonderful first-year writers. For additional online resources about Shakespeare, check out these sites:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>British Library: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bl.uk\/\">http:\/\/www.bl.uk\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Folger Shakespeare Library: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.folger.edu\/\">http:\/\/www.folger.edu\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Globe Theatre: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespearesglobe.com\">http:\/\/www.shakespearesglobe.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Internet Shakespeare Editions: <a href=\"http:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\">http:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Shakespeare 400:\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeare400.org\/\">http:\/\/www.shakespeare400.org\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Who Is Allowed To Be the Custodian of Knowledge?<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>By Autumn Raw<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Two years ago I was assigned <em>Hamlet <\/em>in my college-level English course, and having been pre-empted by many that <em>Hamlet <\/em>was a very, very sad snooze fest, I ventured onto the internet to look for means of making Shakespeare a good deal more interesting. At that point I had read several Shakespearean plays, and had enjoyed them, but this was not a point in time where my excitement to read plays written 400 years ago was peaking. <em>Hamlet <\/em>was \u201cliterally going to bore me to death\u201d(I actually wrote that in the reader\u2019s notebook I turned in for a grade).<\/p>\n<p>So, I went online to find a way to make Shakespeare fresh and exciting to me, and creatively typed \u2018Shakespeare\u2019 into Youtube. There are a variety of videos to scroll through: filmed productions, conspiracy theories, several fanvids of \u201cShakespeare In Love\u201d. A little ways down, you\u2019ll run into a video titled: \u201cHip-Hop &amp; Shakespeare? Akala at TEDxAldeburgh\u201d. This video revolutionized the way I viewed Shakespeare, and it is a required watch. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DSbtkLA3GrY\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DSbtkLA3GrY<\/a>\u00a0 (The video)<\/p>\n<p>The video is only twenty minutes long, and it opens with Akala issuing a pop quiz to the audience of his talk. The question: Is this quote hip-hop, or Shakespeare? Over the course of the short quiz, the audience was surprised to find that a majority of the lines they assumed to be Shakespeare\u2019s were actually the products of rappers. This segues into the proper speech itself, in which Akala will lay down a beat, and rap a sonnet\/lines over it from a variety of Shakespeare\u2019s plays.<\/p>\n<p>(Here\u2019s a quiz that is quite similar to the one Akala gave: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sporcle.com\/games\/the_hmh_project\/shakespeare-or-hip-hop\">http:\/\/www.sporcle.com\/games\/the_hmh_project\/shakespeare-or-hip-hop<\/a>)\u00a0 (DailyMail)<\/p>\n<p>Hip-hop and Sha<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/files\/2016\/03\/Shakespeare_HipHop.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-8027\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/files\/2016\/03\/Shakespeare_HipHop.jpg\" alt=\"Shakespeare_HipHop\" width=\"415\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/files\/2016\/03\/Shakespeare_HipHop.jpg 415w, https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/files\/2016\/03\/Shakespeare_HipHop-300x176.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 415px) 100vw, 415px\" \/><\/a>kespeare are typically never mentioned in the same breath, but the two subjects are more similar than they are dissimilar: musicality is one thing that ties the two subjects together. Hip-hop has a long musical history, \u201cRap shares its roots with other forms of traditionally African-American music, such as jazz, blues, and soul. Rap may also be closely linked to reggae music, a genre that also developed from the combination of traditional African drumming\u201d(Blanchard). Shakespeare\u2019s lines have a distinct rhythm to them, and this makes it relatively easy to set them to music. The Guardian, writing about a workshop Akala was running in 2009, highlights the similarities between the two:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c In a Q&amp;A session, only two of them say they&#8217;d have come if today hadn&#8217;t involved rapping. That begins to change when Akala engages them in a series of exercises that explore the close relationship between the rhythms of modern hip-hop and the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare. He hands out cards printed with a couple of lines. We have to decide whether they&#8217;re the work of the playwright or a rapper. It&#8217;s harder than you&#8217;d think. The kids are adamant that certain words and phrases are those of a rapper, but they&#8217;re actually from Shakespeare. And vice versa. It&#8217;s a hook, and it&#8217;s only half an hour later that they&#8217;re translating Sonnet 18 into hip-hop verse\u201d (<em>The Guardian<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>This is very exciting, because students who before lacked the motivation to read Shakespeare, and look deeply into the meaning of Shakespeare\u2019s verses, are now able to take it, and rhythmically warp it to become more interesting to them. It\u2019s ingenious, and opens up Shakespeare\u2019s language and makes it more accessible to people who before found it to be dry and taxing to read.<\/p>\n<p>The Hip-Hop Shakespeare site: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hiphopshakespeare.com\/\">http:\/\/www.hiphopshakespeare.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Bibliography<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Akala. &#8220;Hip-Hop &amp; Shakespeare? Akala at TEDxAldeburgh.&#8221; <em>YouTube<\/em>. YouTube, 7 Dec. 2011. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Blanchard, Becky. &#8220;THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RAP &amp; HIP-HOP CULTURE.&#8221; <em>THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RAP &amp; HIP-HOP CULTURE<\/em>. Ethics of Development in a Global Environment (EDGE), July-Aug. 1999. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Emery, Andrew. &#8220;Shakespeare: How Do I Compare Thee to Hip-hop?&#8221; <em>The Guardian<\/em>. Guardian News and Media, 15 Apr. 2009. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.<\/p>\n<p>MailOnline, Victoria Woollaston for. &#8220;Are Rappers Better Linguists than SHAKESPEARE? Complex Rhymes Are &#8216;second Nature&#8217; to Hip-hop Artists.&#8221; <em>Mail Online<\/em>. Associated Newspapers, 11 Feb. 2015. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of William Shakespeare we are celebrating the 400th anniversary of his death on April 23, 2016. What better way to do this, than by highlighting the writing done by first-year students in Associate Professor of English John Wesley\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/celebrating-shakespeare-who-is-allowed-to-be-the-custodian-of-knowledge-by-autumn-raw\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[104,105],"class_list":["post-8021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebrating-shakespeare","tag-celebrating-shakespeare","tag-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8021"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8176,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8021\/revisions\/8176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/collinsunbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}