How and Why We Teach Shakespeare: College Teachers and Directors Share How They Explore the Playwright’s Works with Their Students

In How and Why We Teach Shakespeare, nineteen distinguished college teachers and directors draw from their personal experiences and share their methods and the reasons why they teach Shakespeare. The collection is divided into four sections: studying the text as a script for performance; exploring Shakespeare by performing; implementing specific techniques for getting into the plays; and working in different classrooms and settings. The contributors offer a rich variety of topics, including: Working with cues in Shakespeare, such as line and mid-line endings that lead to questions of interpretation; Seeing Shakespeare’s stage directions and the Elizabethan playhouse itself as contributing to a play’s meaning; Using the "gamified" learning model or cue-cards to get into the text; Thinking of the classroom as a rehearsal; Playing the Friar to a student’s Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet; Teaching Shakespeare to inner-city students or in a country torn by political and social upheavals. For fellow instructors of Shakespeare, the contributors address their own philosophies of teaching, the relation between scholarship and performance, and—perhaps most of all—why in this age the study of Shakespeare is so important.

Table of Contents:
Introduction:　How and Why Sidney Homan 　 Section 1: Encountering Shakespeare’s Verbal and Visual Text with Students　 1. Theatricality and the Resistance of Thesis Andrew Hartley 2. `That’s a question: How shall we try it?’ (The Comedy of Errors　5.1) Nick Hutchison 3. Re-Entering　Macbeth:　`Witches Vanish’ and Other Stage Directions S. P. Cerasano 4. Seeing the Elizabethan Playhouse in　Richard II Joseph Candido Section 2: Learning through Performance 5. Acting and Ownership in the Shakespeare Classroom James Bulman and Beth Watkins 6. Performing　Hamlet Russell Jackson 7. `Gladly Would He Learn and Gladly Teach’: Empowering Students with Shakespeare Sidney Homan　　 8. Uncertain Test: Student and Teacher Find Their Way Onstage in Romeo and Juliet Jerry Harp and Erica Terpening 9. `In Practice Let Us Put It Presently’: Learning with　Much Ado Francis Teague and Kristin Kundert Section 3: Approaching Shakespeare from Some Specific Angles 10. Shakespeeding into　Macbeth　and　The Tempest:　Teaching with the Shakespeare Reloaded Website Liam Semler 11. `And so everyone according to his cue’: Practice-led Teaching and Cue-scripts in the Classroom Miranda Fay Thomas 12. Collaborating with Shakespeare Frederick Kiefer 13. Shakespeare without Print Paul Menzer　 Section 4: Shakespeare in Various Classrooms 14. That Depends: What Do You Want Two Plus Two To Be? Cary Mazer 15. `Who's there?’　`Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself’: Attending to Students in Diversified Settings Naomi Conn Liebler 16. Unpicking the Turkish Tapestry: Teaching Shakespeare in Anatolia Patrick Hart 17. Teaching Shakespeare to Retirees in the OLLI Program Alan Dessen Afterword: Cur Non? June Schlueter

About the Author :
Sidney Homan is Professor of English at the University of Florida and Visiting Professor at Jilin University in the People’s Republic of China. The recipient of many teaching awards, he was recently chosen as the Teacher/Scholar of the Year at the University of Florida. He is also a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars. Author of sixteen books on Shakespeare and the modern playwrights, he is also an actor and director in professional and university theatres.