Robinson Professors

Paul D'Andrea

Scholar/playwright Paul D'Andrea began his career at Harvard, earning a B.A. in physics.  After studying philosophy at Oxford, he returned to Harvard for a Ph.D. in English literature.  He helped found the Institute of the Arts and the Theatre of the First Amendment at Mason.  His prize-winning plays include The Trouble with Europe, A Full Length Portrait of America and The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay and are produced widely.  He has taught at Harvard, the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota.  He won the Morse/Amoco Distinguished Teaching Award at Minnesota and the Teaching Excellence award at Mason.  In 2000 his play The Einstein Project was presented at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA.  His adaptation for the twenty-first century of Nathan the Wise, G. E. Lessing's Enlightenment classic about religious tolerance, was produced by Theatre of the First Amendment, opening two weeks after 9/11, filmed and broadcast by WETA/TV (PBS) in 2002, produced in 2003 in Rome by Centro Dionysia and the National Academy of Dramatic Art, and broadcast by RAI/TV in Italian.  Professor D’Andrea teaches courses on topics such as Renaissance art, philosophy and literature; views of gender from Aristophanes through Much Ado about Nothing to Sex and the City; the moral vision of contemporary drama; and Shakespeare.  He has written screenplays and is interested in linking the humanities and the arts through contemporary media.

Fall Courses 2009

ENGL 336: Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances

Shakespeare is one of the most important cultural resources we possess; we need the vision embodied in his work to help us as we create our own aesthetic and ethical lives. The course deals with practical stagecraft, Elizabethan context, and relevance to contemporary art and moral vision. (TR 12:00-1:15 p.m.)

HNRS 122: Reading the Arts

What elements came together to create the Renaissance? Do we have similar or analogous elements in our social, intellectual and artistic life today? What energies brought about the Renaissance? Can we use those or parallel energies to create an American or perhaps an international renaissance? Would that be a satisfactory substitute for war? We will study primary sources only, reading and viewing Petrarch, Donne, Rabelais, Erasmus, Montaigne, Pico, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Milton, Luther and Calvin. Lectures will set these creative figures in context. Disciplines such as art and literary criticism, history of ideas, will be used to interpret the works and try to identify for our use the sources of Renaissance energy. (TR 3:00-4:15 p.m.)

Spring Courses 2010

On leave