Sycorax as subject & agent
Contributor
See project website on merlot.org. Students were enrolled in three course sections. Section H2: Darius Robinson, Madeline Nicosia, Noelle Briggs, and Mary Olsen. Section H5: Addison Clary, Anna Hoang, Casey Green, Joshua Altman, Arthur Weeks, Julianna Davis, Nicole McDonald, Hailey Restuccia, RIley Hobbs, and Robert Gunia. Section H8: Brandon Pardue, Noah Mesiarik, Cindy Dinh, Rita Rose, and Rebecca Hardin.
Files
Date
5-1-2020
Description
Our course, Honors 201 (Colonialism) at Coastal Carolina University, had four primary goals: 1) to understand broadly the avenues and effects of colonialism; 2) to learn how critical and creative thinking can work together in anti-colonial endeavors; 3) to analyze the intersections of colonialism and patriarchy, and 4) to creatively communicate the continued struggle against these forms of oppression. To achieve these ends, Sycorax was our means. In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Sycorax is the characterless character. Prospero calls her a witch and a hag; Caliban calls her his mother. Prospero tells us that she used black magic to imprison Ariel in a tree before Prospero freed him, only to enslave him again. But Sycorax never speaks for herself because she is dead before Act I begins. Her reputation, formed by Prospero the colonizer, not only precedes her, it supersedes her. In post-colonial literature, Sycorax has become a figurehead for Indigenous women, demonized and dismissed, if not altogether silenced. It was our task this semester to help give her her voice back. Students were enrolled in either Honors 201 (Great Themes: Perspectives in Humanities), Honors 202 (Great Themes: Perspectives in the Social Sciences), or Honors 203 (Great Themes: Global Perspectives).
Subject
Sycorax, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Aimé Césaire, colonialism, post-colonialism
Rights
Copyright © Coastal Carolina University. All rights reserved. Usage of this item is covered under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 United States license. For more information contact Kimbel Library at Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC 29526.
Extent
1 website on merlot.org
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Rich, Sara, "Sycorax as subject & agent" (2020). Great Themes: Colonialism. 2.
https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/great-themes-colonialism/2
Comments
Projects are hosted on merlot.org website. See https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewSite.htm?id=9161117&pageid=9182533 Projects are organized into three types: zines & multimedia, prose & poetry, and epistolary fictions.