ENGL 2527

Professor Cheney is really great at letting everyone express their interests in various facets of Shakespeare and really just take over the discussion. I would highly recommend this class if you're interested in having some really cool discussions. One of the things I've noticed about taking classes with PhD/post-docs is that they know so much and just really want to share that with their classes, and this is especially true of Professor Cheney. I learned a lot about everything, from political theology to blazons to Renaissance history. Personally, I have a background in political theory, so it was a lot of fun for me to take this class and get into the intersections between my interests and Shakespeare's interests, and I think UVA's English department just generally does a really great job and making their classes interdisciplinary. If you're interested in politics, the Renaissance, or Shakespeare, I would highly recommend taking Professor Cheney's class. On the other hand, if you're looking for an easy A or getting the grade that you want, this is not the class for that. It's a lot of fun, but when it comes down to writing the essays and making a compelling argument, the first really hard part is that there are no prompts, which is good if you know what you want to write about, but bad because you then have to explain every part of the question. Then, he's also really interested in your ability to get into the details of the text and do a "close reading..." but in the context of the play. It's a little bit confusing to figure out what part exactly you should be improving on, but like he says "the OED is your friend." Maybe it was just me, but it was difficult to get the grade I wanted because the entire grade was just essays and there were no exams. The grading distribution was Participation 10%, Essay 1 20%, Essay 2 25%, Essay 3 30%, Critical Responses 15%. The critical responses are 5 300-word "exploratory," i.e., no thesis, responses that you do for 5 different readings for 5 different works.