Shakespeare’s works are the products of a particular time, place, and culture. Rather than lifting his plays onto a pedestal and suggesting their content is universal, secondary and postsecondary teachers can encourage students to examine these works as artifacts and invite them to critically respond to these texts in ways that are also meaningful and relevant to their lives. Forms of multimodal composition (i.e., works that combine modes such as linguistic, visual, gestural, audio, and/or spatial)—including spoken word poetry, comics, collages, raps, zines, short films, and more—can be used to invite secondary and postsecondary students to engage with literary works in both critical and creative ways. These projects support culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) by providing opportunities for students of color to draw on their cultures, languages, and experiences as they grapple with complex literary texts. As teachers contemplate ways to apply ideas about race from pre-modern and early modern scholars (e.g., through RaceB4Race conferences), it is important to not lose sight of the students themselves, including the cultural and linguistic assets they bring to literary study.

I am an associate professor of English, working in what has been labeled the most conservative city in America according to Forbes (I am based at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic campus in Mesa, AZ). Prior to becoming an academic, I taught English at Sunnyslope High School in Phoenix. I can remember when my students walked out to protest SB1070, a bill that allowed for racial profiling, and when an ethnic studies program was dismantled in a high school in Tucson. I remember the fear that families felt from frequent raids of immigrant workers. And we have all heard the stories about children at the US/Mexico border being locked in cages. Today we are also seeing a movement to suppress any teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in schools and to censor certain literature. My friends who work in classrooms and school libraries here are telling me horror stories about books being removed from their shelves.

It is in this context that my research as a literacy scholar has also taken place. My studies have examined how adolescents and young adults, including students of color, have used creative multimodal forms (e.g., spoken word poetry, rap, comics, and zines) to imagine, heal, express themselves, and engage in social critique. I have seen the potential that multimodal forms of writing have to invite students to talk back to (e.g., critique, challenge, or question) unjust systems. These forms of composition can also be used to give students a voice when confronted with canonical white male authors such as Shakespeare. Teachers can use multimodal composition to level the playing field, share power, and make room for students to participate in larger conversations about race and other topics. This work is necessary to address injustices in education as well. Students of color have historically been subjected to a greater degree of rote learning; however, ALL students deserve the right to assignments that ask them to think critically and creatively.

This chapter explores the concepts of multimodality and funds of knowledge, examines how teachers have used multimodal composition with literature, and offers suggestions for teaching Shakespeare in ways that honor students’ voices and cultures.

Multimodality and Funds of Knowledge

Scholars have long argued that students need to be able to work with a range of modes, including linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, and spatial (The New London Group, 1996). This includes being able to interpret and compose multimodal works (those that combine two or more modes) such as songs, plays, films, spoken word poems, collages, zines, graphic novels, and picture books (Serafini, 2014; Williams, 2019). “New modes of representation need to be brought into the classroom, providing students a wider range of options and resources for sharing what they know and have learned” (Serafini, 2014, p. 35). Furthermore, writers must be able to adapt to various rhetorical situations, employ different tools and technologies, and “compose in multiple environments” (Council of Writing Program Administrators et al., 2011, p. 1).

Shakespeare’s plays are themselves multimodal works. A performed play combines linguistic, audio, visual, gestural, and spatial modes. Making sense of these works therefore requires attention to these different modes. When teachers invite students to use multimodal composition as a way to make sense of and respond to these plays, students have the chance to use forms of communication that are personally and culturally relevant. Students’ responses to literature can function as multimodal counternarratives as they “employ multiple modes of representation to push back against oppressive master narratives” (Curwood & Gibbons, 2010, p. 74). The use of multimodal composition in secondary and postsecondary classrooms supports all students, including English language learners. As an example, Porter (2009) used storyboards (i.e., drawings that plan how a scene will be shot) with students who were learning English. Porter found that storyboards can “enhance comprehension and . . . allow students to represent their understanding . . . when reading Shakespeare” (p. 47).

Students’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) include the cultural and linguistic knowledge, practices, skills, and experiences that students bring to the classroom. Unfortunately, these assets often go unnoticed in formal education. For example, many Latinx students have linguistic resources and cultural knowledge that are not acknowledged or valued in schools in Arizona. Teachers may demand that only English be used or fail to see the cultural practices, traditions, and ways of communicating that students engage in outside of the classroom.

A number of us in literacy studies have drawn attention to the ways that students of color engage in multimodal composition in their out-of-school lives. These students rarely have the opportunity to make use of their interests and talents in formal instruction. Multimodal forms of writing such as raps, spoken word poems, zines, and testimonios are not just fun types of writing to use in the classroom; they also have cultural relevance and particular histories. For example, spoken word poetry is a form that draws on African American practices and traditions such as call-and-response, as well as testifying and witnessing (Smitherman, 1977).

“Classroom teaching and curriculum have to engage with students’ own experiences and discourses, which are increasingly defined by cultural and subcultural diversity and the different language backgrounds and practices that come with this diversity” (The New London Group, 1996, p. 88). To make education more inclusive, it is important that teachers expand their ideas about what counts as writing and encourage students to make use of their linguistic resources and cultural knowledge as they respond to literature. Students need opportunities to examine and critique literary texts in ways that are meaningful to them. As they do so, they are also cultivating multimodal literacies that will serve them well as readers and writers outside of school.

Multimodal Responses to Literature

Teachers have had success using a variety of multimodal projects to encourage close reading. Wissman and Costello (2014) found that when students made digital comics, they needed to return to the literature to gather specific information. This digital-comic project also gave students some real-world experience with art and design elements and helped students realize their potential to be creative. Elsewhere, students have made storyboards with a section from Hamlet (Kremer & Sanders, 2012). Composing these storyboards involved putting the text into language that was more familiar to these students. Porter (2009) used storyboarding to help English language learners visualize the scene they were reading. She first taught students about storyboarding, had them edit down their scene to only the essential parts, and then had them make storyboards to show how they would film the scene.

Collages are another creative form that students can use to respond to literary works. These works contain visuals and sometimes words as well. To illustrate, Sheahan and Nitz (2021) asked students to work in groups to decide on the colors, ideas, and images they would use to represent Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein in their collages. They found that these types of creative responses to literature do more than “ask students to reiterate what they learned about a text or author solely through an essay or exam”; instead, artistic responses to literature bring “students into the creation process from the ground up and [acknowledge] them and their stories as valued and valid in the classroom” (p. 45).

With the exception of assignments like presenting or enacting a scene, sound tends to be an underused mode in formal school assignments. Despite this, Shamburg and Craighead (2009) had success asking students to make audio plays during a Shakespeare unit. Specifically, students composed a Macbeth audio play that incorporated sound effects, music, and their voices. They used the Freesound Project and foley art for sound effects, as well as the Creative Commons Mixter for music. Another way teachers have used sound-based projects is through podcast assignments. Kimbro et al. (2019) point out that using podcasts with Shakespeare’s texts can “foster diverse perspectives.” They add that “rather than privileging singular voices or narratives, podcasting can be conversational and polyvocal, opening up spaces for exploration for the many rather than the few” (p. 3). These kinds of audio-based projects may benefit from some planning ahead. Writing scripts beforehand can help students produce a more polished product and support them as they engage in “critical thinking, problem solving, drafting, editing, [and] revising” (Flemming, 2021, p. 34).

Many students listen to music in their homes and communities, and some even compose songs of their own. Some teachers have honored these interests and experiences by giving students the option to compose music in response to literary works. Anglin and Smagorinsky (2014) studied the raps that high-school students wrote in response to reading Hamlet. They found that students “engaged in dialogic processes in which they explored the play’s meaning, considered rap conventions…, called on additional cultural knowledge…, and jointly composed their poetic texts” (p. 51). As they wrote these songs, students also engaged in traditional stages of the writing process, including prewriting, revising, and preparing for performance.

Furthermore, “like Shakespeare, the students took an existing story and retold it on their own terms and in a new genre” (Anglin & Smagorinsky, 2014, p. 57). Assignments like these require close reading and ask students to consider elements such as point-of-view, plot, characters, and language. Music, sound, and language—along with visuals, gestures, and movement—are modes that are at work in student films. Teachers have used filmmaking in the classroom in some creative ways, not all of them as straightforward as just shooting a scene. For example, students have made videos that combined performance, movie clips, and songs. Shamburg and Craighead (2009) found that “when students integrate movies and songs from their lives with Shakespeare’s words and worlds, they get to synthesize and create from rich sources of language, drama, and digital content—discovering, amplifying, and extending their voices” (p. 74). In their study, students engaged in remix practices as they composed Romeo and Juliet videos. Knobel and Lankshear (2008) have explained that the remix process can involve gathering “cultural artifacts and combin[ing] and manipulat[ing] them into new kinds of creative blends” (p. 22). Ripping software, which permits users to copy material from a CD or DVD, is a technology that allows users to edit a scene from a movie or add their own critical commentary (Cabat, 2009).

Teachers with an interest in filmmaking and literary study have used YouTube to help students become part of a “virtual network of Shakespearean artists, both as producers and critics” (Desmet, 2009, p. 69). Others have asked students to make digital videos that combine a tableau of a scene from a literary text with character confessionals (Costello, 2012). One teacher invited students to make a documentary in the style of Looking for Richard (Pacino, 1996). Bucolo (2007) had groups of students agree on their scene, record their discussions of the scene’s “context and background, language and subtext, and setting and costumes,” and interview an expert (p. 51). The groups then staged and filmed the actual scene. They compiled all of this footage into a film of twenty-to-twenty-five minutes. Their short documentaries were then screened at a public event, with the production teams participating in Q and A sessions with the audience. The teacher noted that this project “removed the barriers between Shakespeare and us” (p. 55). It honored students’ voices, asked them to think critically and creatively about a scene, helped them develop filming and editing skills, and put students in touch with an authentic audience for their work.

Multimodal projects can also combine different forms of expression. Krueger (2015) asked students to create multimodal adaptations of literary texts using fiction, poetry, music, art, and/or film in their projects. Krueger found that this assignment helped students build literary analysis skills and fostered student engagement. Guise and Friend (2017) observed that putting a poem into another medium (e.g., an artwork, song, or short film) can support critical thinking. The process by which works are transposed from one medium into another is known as transmediation. There is a lot of potential to use transmediation and adaptation with scenes from Shakespeare’s plays to highlight injustices—both in his world and our own.

Implications for Teaching

As teachers focus on building a more inclusive curriculum at all levels of education and in all disciplines, it is essential that we make a point to honor students’ cultures, experiences, and interests. Not only is this respectful of individuals, but it also opens up space for us to learn from each other. When working with literature, such as Shakespeare’s plays, students need opportunities to talk back to texts through forms that are meaningful to them. Assignments that offer a menu of choices can support students’ multimodal literacies and funds of knowledge while also encouraging a close reading of the text. Consider the following assignment:

Sample Assignment: Creative Project and Artist Statement

Part 1 Creative Project: Compose a creative project that responds to a scene from the Shakespeare play we are reading. Your project must demonstrate knowledge of the work (use specific details from the text) and reveal your attitudes toward that text. You are encouraged to draw on your talents, skills, interests, experiences, languages, and cultural knowledge as you craft your project. Plan to spend at least five hours on it. Some examples of creative projects include the following:

Part 2 Artist Statement: Write an artist statement containing the four sections below. Please clearly label each section.