Dr. Ian De Jong is a pedagogue, scholar, and erstwhile performer of Shakespeare. He has taught in a range of contexts—leading theater performance workshops for inner-city grade-schoolers, lecturing on medieval literature in a “lifelong learning” university institute, teaching rhetoric and composition to nontraditional community college students, and facilitating seminars on environmental literature at a major research university. But he keeps returning to Shakespeare.

At the Davidson Academy, he workshops Shakespeare curriculum with the school’s profoundly gifted high schoolers. His British literature classes blend performance, history, adaptation, analysis, and creativity as students work with Hamlet, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and other classics of the Shakespearean canon.

His career as a publishing academic, which included a dissertation on the cultural meaning of the folio format, exposed him to a wide range of critical approaches to Shakespeare. As a former actor, director, and dramaturg of Shakespearean productions, he understands the value of dramatic performance in bringing Shakespeare to life. These experiences convinced him that Shakespeare must be encountered in the structured environment of a high school classroom—where students can say, “Stop, wait, help, I don’t understand.” Here, students can form a lasting appreciation for the genius of Shakespeare.