Shakespeare and the Making of America

FAIN: ES-267180-19

Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC 20003-1004)
Margaret H. O'Brien (Project Director: February 2019 to October 2023)

A three-week institute for 25 school teachers on Shakespeare and early American history.

The Folger Shakespeare Library—in partnership with the College of William & Mary, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Historic Jamestowne, and Colonial Williamsburg—will immerse 25 middle and high school teachers in this three-week institute focused on exploring the flow and clash of Shakespeare and Renaissance culture in the early days of the American experiment through a rigorous study of The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice. Teacher participants, resident faculty, and staff will live on-campus at W&M, attend lectures and other classes in the Wren Building, and undertake research at Historic Jamestowne and Colonial Williamsburg. As always, rigorous study of the plays will be distinguished by attention to their scholarly, performative, and pedagogical elements. For the first time, however, we include significant focus on elements of the Early Modern and Early American worlds in which these plays are deeply embedded, particularly in the state of Virginia. This area of inquiry is close to undeveloped in the scholarly world, and nearly unknown to middle and high school teachers. Teaching Shakespeare: Shakespeare and the Making of America, therefore, draws schoolteachers into exciting research and scholarship “as it happens.”