“‘Not a Moor Exactly’: Shakespeare, Serial, and Modern Constructions of Race.”

Corredera, Vanessa. “‘Not a Moor Exactly’: Shakespeare, Serial, and Modern Constructions of Race.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 1, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 30–50, http://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2016.0009. Accessed 21 July 2021.

Corredera argues that when teaching Shakespeare’s plays, specifically Othello, educators should use the term race when discussing early modern conceptions of Otherness. Although scientific understanding of race did not emerge until the 17th century, Elizabethans established Otherness through markers such as religion, skin color, locale, and exoticism. Corredera cites the work of other early modern scholars who agree that constructions of race today are no more stable than they were during the Renaissance, and not necessarily grounded in biology: factors such as language, culture, religion, appearance, and ethnicity still influence contemporary ideas of race (Corredera 30-32). To illustrate, Corredera points to the podcast Serial: This American Crime, which followed the trial of Pakistani American teenager Adnan Syed, convicted of murdering his Korean girlfriend. Journalist and host Sarah Koenig confused religion with race when she said authorities were not motivated by “anti-Muslim feeling, by racism” (Corredera 38). Jury members struggled to define Syed’s Otherness, mistakenly referring to his “Arabic” culture (Pakistanis are not Arabs), and associating him with stereotypes of “how they treat their women” “over there” – even though defendant and jurors all lived in Baltimore, sharing the same culture (Corredera 39-40). Even for informed and educated people, facets of identity outside of biology such as religion and ethnicity still inform conceptions of the Other, making it vital to recognize race in Shakespeare’s works (Corredera 41-45).

--Jess Fraser

"Performing to Learn: Rethinking Theater Techniques to Interpret, Explore, and Write About Shakespeare’s Plays"

 Esposito, Lauren. “Performing to Learn: Rethinking Theater Techniques to Interpret, Explore, and Write About Shakespeare’s Plays.” CEA Critic, vol. 78, no. 2, 2016, pp. 183-198.

Summary:

In this article, Esposito argues that using drama as an approach to literary analysis is beneficial in helping students interact with and interpret Shakespeare’s works in ways that isolated reading cannot. She discusses the values of performance-based learning, emphasizing that it allows students to directly engage with a text more deeply, as they need to make decisions about positioning, body language, tone, and other performative elements. This pulls them into the text and engages them with inquiry-based learning; they must ask questions about character’s motivations, how they might deliver their lines, and how different forms of delivery change the interpretation of a particular scene. She uses Desdemona’s death as an example. Does Desdemona die submissively, or does she die fighting for her life? How students interpret and “perform” this scene changes how they interpret Desdemona’s character. Esposito breaks down methods she uses in performance-based lessons to build these kinds of discussions: 1) the Boal method, in which students work as spectators and actors (spect-actors) to collaborate on how scenes might be performed, and 2) Process Drama, which focuses not on the final product or performance, but on the process of discovering the themes of the text by working/performing through it together. She also shares three example exercises that apply these methods. The first is Silent Switch, where students stand in a circle with one student in the middle. Students on the outside nonverbally communicate with others to switch places, and the person in the middle tries to communicate nonverbally to get someone to let them into the outer circle. This has direct connections to Othello, as it can help students begin a conversation on Othello as an outsider in his society, just as the person in the center of the circle is an “outsider.” The second exercise is Composing and Revising Tableaux, where students “freeze” key scenes of a text to highlight and alternate interpretations of body language and positioning. The third exercise is Performing Scenes as Process Work where students perform and deliver lines for specific scenes, using Shakespeare’s dialogue and taking on the full persona of the character they are portraying. Each method, Esposito argues, allows for student engagement and a deeper level of comprehension of the text, as students are able to work directly with the language and the characters themselves.

Jenny Jadin

"Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Evil: Debating Othello in the Classroom."

 Schapiro, Barbara A. "Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Evil: Debating Othello in the

Classroom." American Imago, vol. 60 no. 4, 2003, p. 481-499. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/aim.2004.0010.

In her article, Barbara Schapiro addresses the psychoanalytical elements of evil at play in Othello and how they framed certain debates and writing prompts in her classroom. Schapiro opens the article with a series of questions all dealing with how we understand evil and destructiveness in the play and in society. She then moves into her discussion of evil by providing context to inform us that Shakespeare, in making the play his own, removed the motive that Iago (or the Ensign in the original) holds for his actions. This creates a discussion and debate in the classroom about motiveless malignity and whether it exists in Iago’s case or not. This then further leads to the ongoing issue Schapiro wishes to confront: Is Iago’s evilness innate or responsive? She continues to examine this by demonstrating that Iago’s actions “would have no power over Othello were Othello not in love” (484). The connectedness of the two men then sways the debate to the side of destructive responsiveness, as opposed to innate evil. Schapiro also analyzes Iago by saying that he suffers from traumatized rejection, which in turn leads to his evilness. After exploring these topics, Schapiro also references debates she included in her classroom and the various and differing responses she received from students. Finally, she concludes with the claim that by viewing Iago’s evilness as responsive, we can turn our attention to the causes.

--Michelle Vucsko

“You Be Othello: Interrogating Identification in the Classroom.”

 DeGravelles, Karin H. “You Be Othello: Interrogating Identification in the Classroom.”

Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, vol. 11, no. 1, 2011, pp. 153-175. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1215/15314200-2010- 021. Accessed 7 July 2021. 

In “You Be Othello: Interrogating Identification in the Classroom,” Karin DeGravelles argues that in teaching Othello, it is our responsibility, as teachers and readers, to engage with the play in a way that focuses attention on those “who have been harmed,” as opposed to the traditional literary elements (172). She says that in doing so, we can inspect the play with a focus on historical trauma. Through her investigation, DeGravelles addresses the multiple “permeable” lines that separate areas such as “fiction and reality, past and present, or the world of students and the world of Shakespeare’s text” (153). DeGravelles dives into these permeable lines through five different discussion points that lead to her claim. First, she argues against mere teaching of identification because it is influenced heavily by “performance choices, including the choice to perform at all” (158). For example, how an actor plays a part or even what they look like can affect an audience’s ability to identify with that character and will change with each performance. Further, an actor’s role or identification shapes the performance of the play, as DeGravelles cites an example of an actor who so identified with Othello and became him on stage that he scared the actress playing Desdemona (159). These discussions then transition into the pedagogical practices, including a push for performance techniques that “reveal much about the play that purely textual approaches do not” (163). When students have the opportunities to read, perform, or act out scenes, they engage with the text in ways that having a teacher read aloud cannot reach. Finally, DeGravelles ends her discussion by reaching her claim through a discussion on race and pedagogy, admitting that many teachers avoid teaching Othello in the classroom because of its potentially sensitive nature, but that is the very reason it should be taught in the first place.

--Michelle Vucsko