Shakespeare and the Pedagogies of Justice

Shakespeare scholars regularly encounter social justice issues in the material that we study and teach. Most often in the classroom our engagement with such issues takes the form of thematic identification and critical parsing. Yet we struggle to form more direct, material connections between coursework and social justice work. This book is for professors of early modern literature who want to heighten the intellectual impact of their courses by thoughtfully using their classrooms as laboratories for social formation and action. Much as Paolo Freire sought to reformat the relationship between teachers and students through his “pedagogy of the oppressed,” we are seeking productive ways of reformatting the relationship between students and this challenging material–ways that move them and us toward social action. We invite chapters that describe and model the doing of social justice work with and through early modern texts, and that claim the academic (not merely social) benefits of integrating social justice work into courses. To rethink the syntax, we might say we are interested in how social action can grow out of the pedagogical tools we employ in the early modern classroom. Bad pedagogy can produce quietism, but we hope to trace some ways in which an alive classroom can spark social change. To that end, we are especially interested in essays that do not approach teaching a single text so much as introduce methodologies, curricula, and assignments that integrate early modern texts with doing social justice.

Topics may include:

• Social justice topics courses
• Service learning
• Community engagement
• Evidence and truth in a post-truth world
• Teaching in the anthropocene
• Inclusive pedagogies
• Students as knowledge producers
• Teaching at an HBC, women’s college, native college, community college
• The global Renaissance
• Teaching performance as social justice
• The scholarly implications of social justice pedagogy
• Multiple and competing “Renaissance world pictures”
• Implications of post-modern ontologies on pedagogy
• The classroom as a community, laboratory, incubator, and change agent

For consideration please send a chapter abstract (500-1000 words), bio (~250 words) and CV (<4 pp). Deadline for abstracts is 27 January, 2017; completed chapters expected by 15 December, 2017.  Please send full set of materials to both Hillary Eklund, Loyola University New Orleans hceklund@loyno.edu and Wendy Beth Hyman, Oberlin College whyman@oberlin.edu.