Teachin' Books
A podcast all about the ways people teach, learn, and work with literature -- aaaand all sorts of other cultural bits and bobs, like video games, theatrical performances, Dungeons and Dragons, and more! Host Jessica McDonald talks about teachin' books in undergraduate classrooms, and she interviews folks to learn more about what cool work is happening in other other teaching and learning contexts.
Teachin' Books
1.21 Interview with Lucy Hinnie / Teaching Shakespeare: Comedy and History
We're back to teachin' Shakespeeeeeare today! This episode features an interview with my lovely friend and brilliant human Dr. Lucy Hinnie! Lucy is currently Wikimedian-in-Residence at the British Library, and is completing her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Saskatchewan.
In the course of our convo about the second-year Shakespeare: Comedy and History class that Lucy taught in 2020, we get into: how to demystify Shakespeare for those who are intimidated by his work; attending with care to the social and political issues raised by studying Shakespeare's work, such as consent and colonialism; the problem with worrying about "anachronism" in our work on historical literature; critique is not cancellation, "Shakespeare be Shakespeare!," burn it all down (!!!), and more. It's a fun one, y'all.
- Find Lucy on Twitter or her website, and check out her Bannatyne Manuscript project and the student blog for the Medieval Women course she instructed. Lucy is also a busy podcaster herself, with recent appearances on Scotichronicast, Coding Codices, and the AskHistorians podcast.
- Read all of Shakespeare's plays online and for free from The Folger Shakespeare Library.
- Check out a couple of the readings Lucy mentions: "A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Stolen Generation" by Anna Kurian and Obscene Pedagogies: Transgressive Talk and Sexual Education in Late Medieval Britain by Carissa M. Harris.
- Decolonize Palestine is the resource I highlight at the end of the episode. You can support the resource by becoming a patron.
- See Eve Tuck's tweet about Truth and Reconciliation, decolonization, and Palestine, and read her essay, co-written with K. Wayne Yang, "Decolonization is not a Metaphor."
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.
**The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**
