The book explores how racial constructions emerged in seventeenth-century England by analyzing popular theatrical portrayals of torture. Ayanna Thompson delves into the intersection of race and performance, revealing how these depictions influenced societal perceptions and contributed to the shaping of racial identities during this period. Through this lens, the work provides a critical understanding of the cultural and historical context surrounding race in early modern England.
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.
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 Shakespeare's 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 Shakespeare's plays as fixed, determined, and dead. Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose shows teachers how to approach Shakespeare's 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 Shakespeare's plays as living, breathing, and evolving texts.
