The Blackspeare Project

As an extension of my research on community-building and -sustaining praxis, I shape my classroom spaces into collaborative, co-creative spaces. Through our engagement in storytelling practices, collaborative syllabus-building, and group projects, I ask my students to read, think, and write critically about our texts. In framing my classes as experiential learning spaces built on mutual respect and conscientious questioning, my students observe their own engagement with race-constructing narratives and perpetuate them through the various afterlives of the course. This engaged application of the genre-race paradigm produces what I call the critical race pedagogy paradigm—an invitation for students and educators to collaborate together in navigating the development of anti-racist pedagogy and classroom spaces. As an extension of the genre-race paradigm, the critical race pedagogy paradigm envisions the classroom as the collaborative, co-creative text resulting from the equal cooperation of educators and students.

My work developing the critical race pedagogy paradigm has resulted in my ongoing digital humanities project: The Blackspeare Project. This project articulates a coherent praxis for teaching Shakespeare within the context of the Black experience to make teaching the subject of race and race-making within Shakespeare more accessible not only to pre-modern scholars but also scholars from across the humanities.

Inspiration for this project

In June of 2022, I began my foray into the world of open-access educational resources (OERs). My search began from an instructor’s standpoint: as a woman-of-color and early career scholar in a predominantly white institution, teaching students in my research area (premodern to postmodern race construction in Shakespearean afterlives) seemed insurmountable

In 2022, there existed very few resources for early-career educators in higher education to teach Shakespeare and race. Most of the materials were devoted to primary- and secondary-level students with very little specifically for adult learners. Additionally, the resources that did exist employed very different methodologies than what I had hoped to find: the Folger Shakespeare library’s OER material seems to be centered in the preservation and perpetuation of Shakespearean texts, with educational material being a vehicle for the cultural continuation of Shakespeare both on a national and global scale; this contrasts with WikiEducator’s methodology, whose approach is grounded in the online accessibility of educational materials to educators and Shakespeare just happens to be one of the authors that their material addresses.

My methodology focuses on providing resources for educators to teach their students critical inquiry and textual analysis through readings and discussions of race in Shakespeare and his Black afterlives. My methodology departs from that of WikiEducator or the Folger because my approach assumes the information that they make explicit (that Shakespeare has a lot to say on race, and so do those who adapt him!).

Upcoming publication dates

The pilot Blackspeare teacher's guide has an anticipated publication date of Fall 2024.

The Blackspeare companion anthology does not have an anticipated publication date at this time.

Potential collaboration or implementation

I am always looking for collaborators! If you are at all interested in contributing your teaching materials to a revised edition of the teacher's guide, please shoot me an email. If you are interested in trialing the teacher's guide in your own course, please use the big button above to check-out the Open Access pilot edition.

Teacher's Guide

Coming soon!

Collaborative Anthology

Check back here to see future news on this exciting, collaborative student-based project!

The Blackspeare Project