“The Refusal of Compassion”: Teaching The Merchant of Venice in a General Education Course

In this chapter, I explore the high-impact practices that work best with non-majors who enroll in my Shakespeare courses for a general education requirement. Specifically, I describe how I situate The Merchant of Venice among classic and contemporary texts in several genres, how I provide historical and cultural context for Shakespeare’s play, and how the study of deictics and etymologies can help students understand the deep origins or bigotry and undergird the text. I discuss how I engage students at all levels and from all disciplines. Ultimately, these strategies, coupled with frequent writing and class discussion, allow students to consider the ways in which language can create suspicion and conspiratorial thinking as well as dramatic action and attachment.