Rural Shakespeare and the Tragedy of Education

How do professors connect Shakespeare to “something like social justice and democratic practice” when students see higher education as suspect and “learning as an act of cultural betrayal”? This is the challenge faced by many of those teaching early modern texts to first-generation economically disadvantaged students in rural com- munities who have been raised to doubt that “the arts and humanities have any positive value at all.” This chapter proposes that the first step in engaging such students is helping them see that their disaffection is the result of their having actually been “the objects of an injustice.” Osborne describes a general education seminar in literature and philosophy which gives students space to temporarily “suspend and question their values.” Here, the tragedies of Shakespeare and other authors enable the kind of productive disorientation (aporia) that enables rediscovery and leads to a hunger for justice.