Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose

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by Ayanna Thompson and Laura Turchi

What does it mean to teach Shakespeare with purpose? It means freeing teachers from the notion that teaching Shakespeare means teaching everything, or teaching Western Civilisation and universal themes. Instead, this invigorating new book equips teachers to enable student-centred discovery of these complex texts. Because Shakespeares plays are excellent vehicles for many topics history, socio-cultural norms and mores, vocabulary, rhetoric, literary tropes and terminology, performance history, performance strategies it is tempting to teach his plays as though they are good for teaching everything. This lens-free approach, however, often centres the classroom on the teacher as the expert and renders Shakespeares plays as fixed, determined, and dead.

Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose shows teachers how to approach Shakespeares works as vehicles for collaborative exploration, to develop intentional frames for discovery, and to release the texts from over-determined interpretations. In other words, this book presents how to teach Shakespeares plays as living, breathing, and evolving texts.