Penn State Institute for the Arts and Humanities

Programs & Initiatives

Summer Seminars for High School Teachers

Summer 2004 ~ Reinventing Shakespeare: The Plays and Their Artistic Legacy

This innovative and interdisciplinary five-day seminar was taught by two award-winning teachers and Shakespeare scholars, assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Greg Colón Semenza, and professor of English at Penn State, Garrett Sullivan. The seminar provided materials to help middle and high school teachers bring Shakespeare into the modern classroom. The seminar explored how five classic plays – Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest – have been performed, adapted, and re-imagined over the centuries through music, the visual arts, and especially film. In addition to discussing each play, they explored music such as Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, graphic images of the plays by artists William Blake and John Everett Millais, and films such as Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet, Greenaway's Prospero's Books, and Branagh’s Hamlet. The participants were exposed to a wide range of teaching approaches and left equipped with extensive curricular materials.