Advanced Placement Classroom: Hamlet

Part of Prufrock's series for the upper level classroom, Advanced Placement Classroom: Hamlet allows teachers to take a fresh approach on one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, by moving beyond basic history and memorization of quotes. Students will study cultural variations of the Hamlet story, recreate the tale's events in a news show format, rewrite scenes using modern-day perspectives, and create their own blogs to discuss the play's relationship to contemporary life. The author also provides easy-to-use discussions of Shakespeare's life and times and the ways Hamlet can be studied from a critical perspective.


About the Author

Timothy J. Duggan, Ed.D., teaches in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction in the School of Education at the University of South Dakota (USD). He also has served as the director of gifted programs at USD, coordinating the South Dakota Governor's Camp and the Ambassadors of Excellence Camp. Dr. Duggan holds degrees from the University of California-Santa Barbara, the University of Nebraska, and the University of South Dakota. He has taught English/language arts at both the high school and college levels, beginning his career in Sonora, CA. From 1997-1999, he served as Director of Education and Outreach for the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival in Omaha, where he managed and performed in the traveling company, "Shakespeare Unbound." Dr. Duggan has given dozens of workshops on teaching Shakespeare through performance and has presented nationally on the subject. He has published articles in Shakespeare, Reading Teacher, and Gifted Child Today, and is the writer/performer of two musical collections devoted to Shakespeare and classic literature, Language Arts 101 and Language Arts 201. He currently lives in the Chicago area, where he continues to teach, write, and perform.