Teaching Shakespeare Beyond The Centre

Showcasing a wide array of recent, innovative and original research into Shakespeare and learning in Australasia and beyond, this volume argues the value of the 'local' and provides transferable and adaptable models of educational theory and practice.

Active approaches to teaching Shakespeare are growing in popularity, seen not only as enjoyable and accessible, but as an egalitarian and progressive teaching practice. A growing body of resources supports this work in classrooms. Yet critiques of these approaches argue they are not rigorous and do little to challenge the conservative status quo around Shakespeare. Meanwhile, Shakespeare scholarship more broadly is increasingly recognising the role of critical pedagogy, particularly feminist and decolonising approaches, and asks how best to teach Shakespeare within twenty-first century understandings of cultural value and social justice. Via vignettes of schools' participation in Coram Shakespeare School Foundation's festival, this Element draws on critical theories of education, play and identity to argue active Shakespeare teaching is a playful co-construction with learners and holds rich potential towards furthering social justice-oriented approaches to teaching the plays.

This book explores how to achieve innovative approaches to teaching and learning Shakespeare and Marlowe within formal learning systems such as school and university.

What are we teaching, when we teach Shakespeare? Today, the Shakespeare classroom is often also a rehearsal room; we teach Shakespeare plays as both literary texts and cues for theatrical performance. This Element explores the possibilities of an 'embodied' pedagogical approach as a tool to inform literary analysis. The first section offers an overview of the embodied approach, and how it might be applied to Shakespeare plays in a playhouse context. The second applies this framework to the play-making, performance, and story-telling of early modern women – 'Shakespeare's sisters' – as a form of feminist historical recovery. The third suggests how an embodied pedagogy might be possible digitally, in relation to online teaching. In so doing, this Element makes the case for an embodied pedagogy for teaching Shakespeare.

This handbook brings together 54 essays by scholars from all parts of the world. It offers a fresh and comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare tragedies as both works of literature and as performance texts, written by a playwright who was himself an experienced actor.

This Element examines the opportunities that interactive digital editions give teachers, software developers and scholars to connect Shakespeare's works to twenty-first century students by presenting three case studies of interactive digital editions of Shakespeare incorporated into classroom teaching.

Considering the different traditions of cosmopolitan thinking and experimentation, this cutting edge volume examines the contemporary revival of cosmopolitanism as a response to the challenges of living in an interdependent world. Through a unique multidisciplinary approach, it takes the debate beyond the one-sided universalism of the Euro-American world and explores the multiverse of transformations which confront cosmopolitanism. The collection highlights central questions of cosmopolitan responsibility, global citizenship and justice as well as the importance of dialogue among civilizations, cultures, religions and traditions. Exploring the ethical and political dimensions of globalization, it outlines the pathways of going beyond cosmopolitanism by striving for a post-colonial cosmopolis characterized by global justice, trans-civilizational dialogues and dignity for all.