Jennifer Oliver
First-Year Seminar 65Y | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 3:00 PM–5:00 PM
From anime to Shakespeare, from Homer to Hollywood, the threat—or reality—of shipwreck has inspired artistic responses across time and cultures. Representing anxieties ranging from identity to political and colonial power, or ecological crisis, shipwreck presents a range of destructive and transformative possibilities. Scenes of shipwreck also pose urgent questions of community, ethics, conflict and cooperation across social and cultural divides. Ships and their afterlives are caught up in the present-day global environmental nightmare, with many eventually finding their way to one of three beaches in South Asia where they are broken down in hugely dangerous and polluting processes. Both symbolically and materially, then, surviving shipwreck is both complex and fascinating.
Students will explore shipwreck from a range of perspectives, whether at-sea or from the shoreline, and across a wide range of cultures and time periods. They will encounter texts, performances, and films that will inspire discussion and spark critical and creative responses; assignments will take varied and flexible forms, building analytical and communication skills and tapping into the power of non-written forms of communication. Activities will include visits to Harvard libraries and museums (and beyond, including at sea), practical creative workshops in performance and other arts, as well as a guest speaker session with writer and director Professor Wes Williams, discussing the craft of staging shipwreck in co-devised theatre projects. Students will consider ships and wrecks as spaces for the (re)building of community, the testing and reforming of ethical bonds, and as ‘heterotopias’, spaces for exploring ideas differently.
Note: Activities will include visits to Harvard libraries and museums (and beyond, including at sea), practical creative workshops in performance and other arts, as well as a guest speaker session with writer and director Professor Wes Williams, discussing the craft of staging shipwreck in co-devised theatre projects.