Abstract
This article examines the pedagogical implications of teaching about the past in a way that establishes continuity in relation to present and future moments. I describe and analyze how my Trinity College students navigated my course, “Crossing the Color-Line,” which aimed to eradicate boundaries and entangle the professional and personal, social and political, past and present, and black and white in an engaged manner. I argue that a radical course such as “Crossing the Color-Line” can showcase, through literature and other media, how fusing difference of all kinds—cultural, religious, literary, historical, gender—promotes rigorous student directed learning experiences that are inclusive. Because Shakespeare was not the sole authorial voice in the room, or the only early modern author in our syllabus, “Crossing the Color-Line” actively resisted the literary, racial, social, and cultural homogeneity that one can often find in an early modern classroom. By not being Shakespeare-centric, the course placed value on the female perspective and refrained from being androcentric in its authorial focus. Moreover, by positioning “the problem of the color-line” as relevant in the early modern period, the combined study of African-American and early modern English texts challenged critical race studies to include pre-nineteenth-century literature.
Highlights
When the structure of an academic course poses an intellectual problem, students are bound to a curriculum that requires them to resolve critical issues because it is not the literature but the very foundation of the course itself that makes students think
On the level of racial representation and inclusivity, the color-line is always crossed in my early modern classroom, even when Shakespeare and his contemporaries are the sole authorial voices, because the authors always enter the room through me
2 This writing exercise, from which I will include excerpts, required students to enter into a text with the specific goal of assessing its value within the context of Crossing the Color-Line and in relation to the critical concepts used by Douglass and Du Bois
Summary
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. When the structure of an academic course poses an intellectual problem, students are bound to a curriculum that requires them to resolve critical issues because it is not the literature but the very foundation of the course itself that makes students think. In Crossing the Color-Line, students re-read early modern texts by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe—primarily through a racial lens—after first studying theories and concepts such as the “color-line,” “veil,” “mask,” and “double-consciousness” articulated by Frederick Douglass in “The Color Line” and W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk. Commenting on an African-American character in Du Bois’ text, one student noted in an inroad assignment, “John left home because he wanted to better his community and himself by getting an education He sought to cross the color-line.” 4 John, much like Du Bois himself, defies America’s Jim Crow laws by metaphorically sitting with the white man. Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state Esteem him as a lamb, being compared With my confineless harms
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
