Teaching Shakespeare Inside Out: Creating a Dialogue Between Traditional and Incarcerated Students

This chapter explores the possibilities for teaching Shakespeare within and outside of the criminal justice system by putting these communities of learners into substantive dialogue. In contrast to many “prison Shakespeare” programs, a social-justice oriented approach prioritizes learning over “therapy” and promotes dialogue and collaboration among inside and outside populations. While this approach can yield positive results like “increased activism and decreased stereotyping,” its difficulties can be profitable too, as students learn to make the most of “the uncomfortable dissonances that occur when diverse populations interact.” This, argues Jayme M. Yeo, is where Shakespeare faculty can best transmit their skills to students, “for multivalence and conflict accurately describe the work of literary interpretation itself.”