UM Faculty Share Shakespeare with Montana High School Students

MISSOULA – University of Montana faculty members will lead interactive sessions with Montana high school students that explore how Shakespeare radiates across academic disciplines and share some of the many opportunities that await students in higher education from Monday to Wednesday, April 25-27.

 The We Are Montana in the Classroom’s distance-learning festival is offered in conjunction with “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, on national tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library,” sponsored by UM’s Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library and the Montana Museum of Art and Culture.

The festival will include the following distance-learning sessions:

• 11 a.m. Monday, April 25:“Shakespeare Through the Lens of Modern Astronomy,” a glimpse at astronomy in the age of Galileo and Copernicus with physics and astronomy Professor Dan Reisenfeld. 

• 1 p.m. Monday, April 25: “Bad Romance,” an exploration of love and relationships in Shakespeare’s plays, and in modern life, with Sara Polanchek, clinical director in the Department of Counselor Education.

• 9:15 a.m. Tuesday, April 26: “From Artifact to Performance,” in which history Professor Anya Jabour, an adviser to the PBS miniseries “Mercy Street,” will invite students to imagine how they would stage a scene about slave life based on a primary-source artifact from the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

• 1p.m. Tuesday, April 26: “La Langue de Shakespeare,” a tour of French influences in and rewritings of Shakespeare with French instructor Seth Barnes-Smith.

• 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 27: “Madness, Vision and Perception: Neuroscience in Shakespeare,” a look at “King Lear” through the lens of neuroscience with Michael Kavanaugh, professor and director of the Center for Structural and Functional Neuroscience.
• 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 27: “Designing Shakespeare,” an opportunity for students to create their own scenic design for Shakespeare with Mike Monsos, professor of scenic design/technology and director of UM’s School of Theatre & Dance.

We Are Montana in the Classroom partners with more than 100 UM faculty members, professionals and graduate students to inspire K-12 students about higher education and career pathways. This academic year, the program is on track to reach 10,000 students through statewide tours, local classroom visits and distance-learning experiences. We Are Montana in the Classroom belongs to the UM Broader Impacts Group in the Office of Research and Creative Scholarship.

Shakespeare across the Disciplines will be broadcast from the studios of Inspired Classroom, a Missoula-based educational technology company. Sessions are offered for free to K-12 schools. Teachers can book register their classes or request links to recorded sessions by emailing We are Montana in the Classroom Program Manager Nathalie Wolfram atnathalie.wolfram@umontana.edu.