This double book launch stresses the ongoing need for feminism in Shakespeare teaching and offers multi-modal pedagogical approaches to create empowering spaces in the field. Authors Emma Whipday and Varsha Panjwani will be in conversation with Series Editor Gillian Woods to discuss their books, talk about the process of writing in the new minigraph format, and share practical exercises.

The conversation will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Emma Whipday, Teaching Shakespeare and His Sisters: An Embodied Approach, Cambridge Elements: Shakespeare and Pedagogy Cambridge Elements in Shakespeare and Pedagogy (CUP, 2023)

What are we teaching, when we teach Shakespeare? Today, the Shakespeare classroom is often also a rehearsal room; we teach Shakespeare plays as both literary texts and cues for theatrical performance. Teaching Shakespeare and His Sisters: An Embodied Approach explores the possibilities of an 'embodied' pedagogical approach as a tool to inform literary analysis. The first section offers an overview of the embodied approach, and how it might be applied to Shakespeare plays in a playhouse context. The second applies this framework to the play-making, performance, and story-telling of early modern women – 'Shakespeare's sisters' – as a form of feminist historical recovery. The third suggests how an embodied pedagogy might be possible digitally, in relation to online teaching. In so doing, Whipday makes the case for an embodied pedagogy for teaching Shakespeare ­– and his sisters.

Varsha Panjwani, Podcasts and Feminist Shakespeare Pedagogy, Cambridge Elements in Shakespeare and Pedagogy (CUP, 2022)

Scores of women feel excluded from Shakespeare Studies because the sound of this field (whether it is academics giving papers at conferences or actors sharing performance insights) is predominantly male. In contrast, women are well represented in Shakespeare podcasts. Noting this trend, this Element envisions and urges a feminist podagogy which entails utilizing podcasts for feminism in Shakespeare pedagogy. Through detailed case studies of teaching women characters in Hamlet, A Winter's Tale, The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It, and through road-tested assignments and activities, this Element explains how educators can harness the functionalities of podcasts, such as amplification, archiving, and community building to shape a Shakespeare pedagogy that is empowering for women. More broadly, it advocates paying greater attention to the intersection of Digital Humanities and anti-racist feminism in Shakespeare Studies.

Feminism in Shakespeare Teaching Books Launch