Learning from the Past: Drama, Science, Performance
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this team-taught, interdisciplinary course exploring how seventeenth-century England became, in the course's phrase, "a world turned upside down" through new ideas in science, religion, and politics. Students read plays by Shakespeare, Ford, Brecht, Churchill, and Kushner alongside primary and secondary texts from history, philosophy, and science, examining figures like Descartes and Newton against the era's dramatists. The class compares period debates about the scientific method, art, and society to present-day equivalents, treating the theatricality of new scientific models as a subject in its own right. Coursework includes reading, research, writing, and conversation, plus theatrical experimentation: students compose and perform their own scenes drawn from the material studied. Materials include the syllabus, reading lists, and assignments as published on MIT OpenCourseWare, free to access with no certificate offered.