Situating Shakespeare Pedagogy in US Higher Education: Social Justice and Institutional Contexts

by Marissa Greenberg (Editor), Elizabeth Williamson (Editor)

Overview

On college and university campuses across the United States, scholar-teachers and their students find themselves in conditions of both real threat and tremendous possibility. Building on the recent surge of interest in equitable pedagogy within the field of Shakespeare and Renaissance literary studies, Situating Shakespeare Pedagogy in U.S. Higher Education makes a case for anchoring our teaching in these institutional power dynamics that have historically contributed to systemic injustice and continue to affect our work on a daily basis. Each of the contributors to this collection speaks directly to the intersection between their own identities, the lived experiences of their students, and the particular qualities of the institutions where they teach—including student demographics, curricular requirements, geographical location, and comparative levels of administrative support for implementing social justice approaches. From this perspective, they provide hope and practical guidance for scholar-educators who want to meet our students where they are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399516648
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	01/08/2024
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Marissa Greenberg is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Metropolitan Tragedy: Genre, Justice, and the City in Early Modern England (Toronto, 2015) and the co-editor (with Rachel Trubowitz) of Milton’s Moving Bodies (Northwestern, forthcoming). She has published widely on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, theatrical adaptation, social justice pedagogy and bodily motions in early modern English literature and culture. She is currently writing a book about the ways contemporary authors and artists adapt John Milton’s works to advance today’s movements for gender equity, racial justice, disability rights and religious freedom.

Elizabeth Williamson has served as both a faculty member and an academic dean at The Evergreen State College. She is the author of The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama (Ashgate, 2009) and the co-editor (with Jane Hwang Degenhardt) of Religion and Drama in Early Modern England: The Performance of Religion on the Renaissance Stage (Ashgate, 2011). Her work has appeared in Wiley Blackwell’s New Companion to Renaissance Drama, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Borrowers and Lenders, English Literary Renaissance, and Studies in English Literature.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Abstracts

Notes on Contributors

Introduction - Marissa Greenberg and Elizabeth Williamson

1. On Shakespeare, Anticolonial Pedagogy, and Being Just - Amrita Dhar

2. Deeply Engaged Protest: Social Justice Pedagogy and Shakespeare’s "Monument" - Elisa Oh

3. Teaching Shakespeare at an Urban Public Community College: An Equity-Driven Approach - Victoria Muñoz

4. Teaching Shakespeare as a Killjoy Practice in a White Dominant Institution - Mary Janell Metzger

5. Shakespeare and Environmental Justice: Collaborative Eco-Theater in Yosemite National Park and the San Joaquin Valley - Katherine Steele Brokaw

6. Where Curriculum Meets Community: Teaching Borderlands Shakespeare in San Antonio - Katherine Gillen and Kathryn Vomero Santos

7. Dressing to Transgress: Aesthetic Matching, Historical Costumers of Color, and the Restorying of Institutional Spaces - Penelope Geng

8. Shakespeare in a Catholic University: (Re)creating Knowledge in a Divided Landscape - Kirsten N. Mendoza

9. Shakespeare’s Mixed Stock: Biracial Affect in the Field - Roya Biggie and Perry Guevara

10. Who Shot Romeo? And How Can We Stop the Bleeding?: Urban Shakespeare, White People, and Education Beyond the Neoliberal Nightmare - Eric L. De Barros

Afterword - Wendy Beth Hyman

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

Through first-person essays by established and emerging scholars, Situating Shakespeare Pedagogy exemplifies the varied geographical and institutional landscapes of US higher education today. Contributors explore the symbiotic relationship between classroom instruction and the social infrastructure of the academy; the physical architecture of our archives, libraries, museums, and monuments; collaborative potentials of bilingual performance spaces in the Borderlands; and ecologically informed public engagement in National Parks.

Jonathan Hsy