Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
Second Edition
- Editor: Joseph M. Ortiz
- Pages: 202
- Published: 2024
- ISBN: 9781603296489 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603296472 (Hardcover)
By the time they encounter Romeo and Juliet in the classroom, many students have already been exposed to various, and sometimes incongruous, manifestations of Shakespeare’s work. This volume makes a virtue of students’ familiarity with the preconceptions, anachronisms, and appropriations that shape experiences of the work, finding innovative pedagogical possibilities in the play’s adaptations and in new technologies that spark students’ creative responses.
The essays cover a wide area of concerns, such as marriage, gender, queer perspectives, and girlhood, and contributors embrace different ways of understanding the play, such as through dance, editing, and acting. The final essays focus on decolonizing the text by foregrounding both the role of race and economic inequality in the play and the remarkable confluence of Romeo and Juliet and Hispanic culture.
Acknowledgments (ix)
Preface (xi)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Editions (3)
Contextual Readings (6)
Film and Text Adaptations (8)
Critical Readings (11)
Pedagogical Resources (16)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (21)
Age, Authority, Marriage
“Get Her Heart”: Reading Romeo and Juliet through Early Modern Ideas of Marriage (29)
Juliet’s Age and Questioning Authority in Romeo and Juliet (37)
Individualism and the Character Turn in Romeo and Juliet (43)
Gender and Sexuality
An Intersectional Approach to Girls and Girlhoods in Shakespeare’s Verona (50)
Juliet and Girl Power (58)
Queering Romeo and Juliet with Film Adaptations (65)
Considering Genre
Rediscovering the Familiar: Comedy in Romeo and Juliet (72)
“Love at First Sonnet”: Romeo and Juliet’s Collaborative Sonnet in Context (78)
Textual and Performance Histories
Editing Romeo and Juliet in the General Education Shakespeare Course (86)
Benvolio Must Die: Q1’s “Conceited” Romeo and Juliet (93)
Teaching Romeo and Juliet with Cue Scripts (102)
The High School Classroom
Scene Variations: Romeo and Juliet in the High School Classroom (111)
So You Already “Know” Romeo and Juliet? How to Capitalize on Students’ Familiarity with the Play (119)
Intersections with Race Studies
Romeo and Juliet in a Course on Shakespeare and Race (128)
Dancing with the Queen of Sheba: Romeo and Juliet, Ballet, and Race Studies (135)
Shakespeare and Latinidades
Not-So-Ancient Grudges: Grounding Romeo and Juliet in the Histories of the US-Mexico Borderlands (144)
Erasing for Inclusion: Romeo and Juliet at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (151)
Diversifying Fair Verona: Shakespeare in Multilingual Classrooms (161)
Notes on Contributors (169)
Survey Participants (173)
Works Cited (175)
