The Pressures of History: Shakespearean Performance and Interpretation

Interpretations of Shakespeare’s characters have been subject to the pressures of history, exhibiting a progression of performance styles in accordance with changes in ideas and concerns over time. Shakespeare’s complex portrayals of women leave room for cultural influences of a time period to greatly influence interpretations because of the ambiguous nature of some of his major female characters. Lady Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing’s Beatrice both overstep and challenge gender boundaries, and the combination of their defiant natures and textual ambiguities have made these characters highly controversial over the past four centuries.Various cultures over time have imposed specific readings of the characters that serve to reinforce the male-dominated expectations of a given society. The examination of variations in performance styles and interpretations of these two extremely canonical characters revealinsights into gender ideologies that existed during various time periods throughout history. The combination of this analysis with an exploration of the effects of the more recent applications offeminism and film, which have both helped to reshape the cultural images of both Lady Macbeth and Beatrice, will aide in an observation of the status of gender relations in our contemporary society. The current trend of interpretations of these characters could also provide predictions about future gender relations in our culture.

The Impact of Gender and Pedagogy on the Development of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies in Undergraduate Engineering Classrooms

The purpose of this paper is to examine ways in which pedagogy and gender of instructor impact the development of self-regulated learning strategies as assessed by the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) in male and female undergraduate engineering students. Pedagogy was operationalized as two general formats: lecture plus active learning techniques or problem-base/project-based learning. One hundred seventy-six students from four universities participated in the study. Within-group analyses found significant differences with regard to pedagogy, instructors’ gender, and student gender on the learning strategies and motivation subscales as operationalized by the MSLQ. Male and females students reported significant post-test differences with regard to the gender of instructor and the style of pedagogy. The results of this study showed a pattern where more positive responses for students of both genders were found with the same-gendered instructor. The results also suggested that male students responded more positively to project and problem-based courses with changes evidenced in motivation strategies and resource management. Female students showed decreases in resource management in these two types of courses. Further, female students reported increases in the lecture with active learning courses.