Fall 2026

SIGNATURE SEMINAR SERIES  (12 WEEKS)

Maps, Masks, and Metamorphoses: The Shape of the Self in Transit 

Dr. Roche

This fall course explores Shakespeare’s sustained fascination with movement—across spaces, cities, roles, and names—and the transformations such movement produces. In Shakespeare, the self is rarely fixed; it is shaped by travel and exile, by disguise and performance, by departure, loss, and return. Framed by questions of borders and belonging, the course examines how identity is negotiated through maps and masks, through speech acts and social roles, through journeys both outward and inward. The body becomes a vessel, the city a stage, and the road an initiatory path where selves are tested, fractured, and remade. Moving beyond illusion and authority (the focus of the spring series), this course asks what happens after stability collapses: when political, linguistic, or moral maps no longer hold. Drawing on philosophy, performance, and cultural history, we consider how Shakespeare anticipates modern questions of mobility and identity: Who belongs where? What defines the self in motion? And what happens when the coordinates of meaning dissolve?

Expanded Philosophical Focus:
Not only identity and illusion, but the movement of the self, across spaces, cities, roles, and names. The body as a vessel, the city as a stage, the road as an initiatory path. Language, masks, and travel all become means of philosophical and theatrical transformation.

Additional Philosophical Anchors:

• Plato (Cratylus, Theaetetus) – naming, perception, travel of the soul
• Ovid (Metamorphoses) – transformation as journey
• Montaigne – Essais as inner travelogue; “Que sais-je?”
• Pico della Mirandola – the self as migratory potential
• Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, Mandeville (as intertexts or supplements)
• Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities) — for a modern poetic frame
• Foucault — cities of surveillance, identity, masks

Plays:  Henry V, Pericles, and Cymbeline

📅 Dates: (12 weeks)

• September: 14, 21, 28
• October: 5, 12, 19, 26
• November: 2, 9, 16

(Recess: Thanksgiving week)

• November: 30
• December 7 (final session)

🕔 Schedule: Monday, 5:00 PM–6:30 PM

📍 Format: Hybrid (in-person & online)

💵 $250-$500 Sliding Scale

🏢Location:

Northampton Center for the Arts – Barn Door Gallery 

33 Hawley Street, Northampton, MA 01060

Website: nohoarts.org

Important Details:

• Please download the SLACK app to access reading materials and bringyour laptop.I am happy help set up SLACK during the first week of class.
• Extra readings will be posted on SLACK. Although not required, these materials will enhance our understanding of the context in which these plays were written.
• Windows download  Mac download  Linux download

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Workshop will be announced soon! 

Co-taught with tba

📅 Dates: TBA 

🕔 Schedule: Monday, 5:00 PM–6:30 PM

📍 Format: Hybrid (in-person & online)

💵 Price: included in the semester registration. walk-ins: suggested donation $20

🏢Location:

Northampton Center for the Arts – Barn Door Gallery

33 Hawley Street, Northampton, MA 01060

Website: nohoarts.org