Shakespeare Quarterly

Thanks, Tom. I am starting to think that I should either edit out the pedagogy section or make it one that is woven throughout the essay. Of course, I cannot answer the questions you raise about the specifics of the pedagogical practices involved in these particular videos (which Laurie Osborn also raises as a concern later in the essay) because I am not conducting participatory research: this gets to the ethical implications of this non-participatory methodology (see my comment to Timothy Francisco and Laurie Osborn later in the essay).
 
In my zeal to portray the complex nexus of issues raised by these YouTube videos, I have as you say “cast out too many lines.” I think I will pull some of those lines in for the revised version so that the essay has a clearer focus.

Your essay offers many thoughtful strategies teachers could employ in advising students who are embarked on turning the semi-public work of the classroom into a product that has global broadcasting potential. But its last section on pedagogy does not speak specifically enough to the conditions of production of the YouTube takes on Titus and Othello you discuss in its first thirty pages. Though you return in your last pages to focus on the race-displacements of the three videos in question, you tend to address the ethical imperative for prior classroom discussion of subjects like nontraditional casting in a manner that could pertain to any form of performance assignment.

Part of the problem for me here is that you may have cast out a few too many lines in an essay which, given the parameters of the special SQ issue, should probably be more narrowly focused. Another is the problem of identifying the extent to which the videos you examine, as well as the many more you do not, remain “moored” to their assumed origin as classroom assignment. The indefinite afterlife these videos enjoy on the internet make me wonder about the comparative status of their more limited careers as classroom projects, and also about the nature of the instruction students received before they set about making their films. Towards the end of the essay, you offer many thoughtful reflections on the kind of advice students should be given with respect to casting practices and race-based exploration. But given your somewhat more casual approach in the essay’s first section with respect to “harvesting” the videos in question—why you choose these three videos in particular, why you think they are representative–we are supplied with no specific record of how, say, a single video develops from it origin in an assignment to its process of execution to its (assumed) classroom screening and to its (further assumed) classroom discussion.

This lack of documentation makes me feel when reading the essay that the videos’ status as “homework” or “term project” may be a less instructive way of defining them than, say, afterschool group recreation. My point here is that if pedagogy is to remain a vital part of this project, it would certainly help to know more about the circumstances in which the videos discussed were produced. I would, in any event, very much like to see a more tightly-focused, better documented version of this essay published in the special SQ volume, and look forward to reading it. That said, I should also say how much I enjoyed and profited from your close readings/analyses of the three videos themselves, especially the last one.

I agree with Laurie. More on ‘un-moor’ later as well.

Thanks, Laurie. I am particularly bad at titles so I am open to any and all suggestions!
 

I am strongly in favor of thoughtful articles about pedagogy getting wider readership and having more influence. To that end, I worry about titles like this one. It gives a thorough sense of what the essay is about, but it does not really draw the reader in as well as it might—and it is a mouthful! What about picking up on the pun/phrase that you use a lot within the paper—“Unmooring Othello: Researching and Teaching (with?) YouTube Videos”? (In my opinion this paper overuses “unmoor” at one point and potentially undermines the pun and idea, but I will comment on that moment at that point in the paper)