As a teacher of high-school English, I have always been concerned about when, where, how, and why a work of literature has been produced. Students must understand the context of what they read; therefore, historic events and the culture in which the author lived, must be taught. "Literature was not written in a vacuum." When I teach Macbeth, my students must uncover the facts about the Elizabethan Era, the Tudors, and then of course, the Stewarts. The class will read essays on James I's attitude toward witches and witchcraft; students will learn about court intrigue. We will dissect the magic of Shakespeare's poetry together -- and dissecting does not cause the magic to dissipate. I have students read various lines in multifarious ways to comprehend Shakespeare's motives and concepts.

To teach a seminal American work like Huckleberry Finn, students learn about the antebellum south, life on the Mississippi, and the courage of a writer like Twain to create an anti-racist novel in the post-Civil War era, a time of "carpetbaggers and scalawags." Though the end of the novel is disturbing, students learn how to place it within its historic context. They read essays by Twain scholars and authors, such as Toni Morrison.

Part of any unit is a straight-forward essay in which students must write about the literature using direct quotation from the work, itself. Then there are creative assignments, those writings in which students must apply their knowledge of the work, but create something new. I have asked students to write Act 5, scene 9 of Macbeth. Students have written another ending for Great Expectations.  They have written dialogues between Brutus and Portia; my students have created "modern" tales for a pilgrimage to someplace other than a religious venue.

The teaching of culture through history (and literature) is only limited by the teacher's imagination.