To apply for enrolment a student must submit a small file of original writing consisting of not fewer than five and not more than ten pages, and including at least three poems and one short story. This full-year course investigates ways in which directors have adapted Shakespeare's plays to the cinema or television screen. Its basis is the viewing and analysis of videos of six plays chosen to illustrate the various genres and periods of Shakespeare's career and different styles of production and adaptation. A study of British and Irish drama since the 1970s, concentrating on politically committed dramatists and the emergence of women playwrights. Addressing the plays primarily as theatre texts, it emphasises the theatrical strategies and conventions deployed in the texts, some of which self-consciously celebrate theatricality.
Teaching combines lectures, discussions, play-readings and viewing theatrical videos.
This course will concentrate on selected topics in New Zealand literature and cultural studies. The range of topics will vary from year to year in response to staff research interests and the Department's wider New Zealand studies programme. The second part of the course focuses on poetry and prose by Pacific Islanders writing in English during the post-colonial period. This course responds to the recent revival of interest in poetry of the Victorian period. As well as covering the great well-known poets such as Tennyson, Matthew Arnold and the Brownings, it deals with neglected women poets whose work is only now being rediscovered.