Can I Teach That? by Linder Suzanne;Majerus Elizabeth;

Author:Linder, Suzanne;Majerus, Elizabeth;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4519210
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE AND CLASSROOM LANGUAGE

It is important that I emphasize that, due to my school’s setting and culture, I did not ask questions specifically inviting students to discuss characters’ sexualities; however, I did not discourage students from doing so when they brought up the topics. Students were invited to examine concepts such as shifting gender roles and complex romantic relationships through the implementation of queer pedagogy.

When, for example, one student observed, “Portia loves being a man. You know she’s gonna be sad when she’s gotta put that dress back on,” my questions were not only “Why do you think that?” and “What evidence supports that?” We also considered, “Why are we okay with a female character taking on a masculine role? How would we respond if it was a male character taking on a female role? Why are the two responses different?” Such questions helped us to consider societal norms linked to gender and sexuality that were so often ignored or invisible.

Deborah Britzman wrote in her discussion of queer pedagogy that reading a text through a queer lens revealed that “there are no innocent, normal, or unmediated readings and that the representations drawn upon to maintain a narrative or a self as normal, as deviant” depend heavily on socially created norms, such as gender roles and heteronormativity (1998, 226). As my students and I finished reading The Merchant of Venice, we reflected on how initially we had relied heavily and uncritically on personal assumptions and identities, and how over the course of the play we had come to recognize the many ways that our interactions with the text and with one another were complex and multilayered—in fact, how they were queer in that they pushed us to examine and question “normal” as a concept.

We had come to appreciate the contradictory complexities of both the characters and ourselves, and we had discussed the ways that we and the characters each traversed different identities, including those related to gender and sexuality. As we moved forward, we all appreciated that though the play had been instrumental in introducing these considerations and conversations, the play itself was far less important than the conversations that it made possible. By introducing queer readings of a text and ourselves, we had opportunities to examine language as key to identity and to consider the ways that language established what was acceptable or taboo.

When the play was done, the papers were graded, and the projects were finished, I was pleased with the conversations that The Merchant of Venice had made possible within the “safe” context of literature. I had encountered no parental complaints or administrative concerns, as I was using a school-approved text and asking students questions based on their analyses and on general social issues. However, the play was a means to an end.

As we had worked through the play and questioned why people made certain assumptions about others related to sexual orientation and gender, I had found that it was easier to deal with students’ use of homo- and transphobic language.

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