#Shaxrace: Teaching Shakespeare and Race through Performance

In this article, I reflect on teaching one of the only undergraduate modules in the UK that examines Shakespeare and racial politics through contemporary film and theatre. In the module ‘#Shaxrace: Shakespeare and Racial Politics’, students explore how Shakespeare’s plays function within historic and contemporary racial politics. I consider how performance – as an ephemeral practice that holds social, political and cultural meaning and memory – provides a useful critical tool for enabling students to engage with difficult material. Indeed, in what follows I identify three specific features of performance-informed pedagogy that have directly opened up questions of social justice and racial politics in my seminar room; and I hope will provide an exemplar for others who wish to do the same. In addition, I explore how, as one of very few Shakespearian scholars of colour in the UK, I navigate personal identity in my pedagogy. While the University of Kent’s student population is majority white, this module has attracted a higher number of students of colour and each cohort I have taught has been relatively diverse.