Is 'Romeo and Juliet' really a love story, or is it a play about young people li
ving in dangerous circumstances? How might life under occupation produce a new r
eading of 'Julius Caesar'? What choices must a group of Palestinian students mak
e, when putting on a play which has Jewish protagonists? And why might a young P
alestinian student refuse to read? For five months at the start of 2013, Tom Spe
rlinger taught English literature at the Abu Dis campus of Al-Quds University in
the Occupied West Bank. In this account of the semester, Sperlinger explores hi
s students' encounters with works from 'Hamlet' and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' to Ka
fka and Malcolm X. By placing stories from the classroom alongside anecdotes abo
ut life in the West Bank, Sperlinger shows how his own ideas about literature an
d teaching changed during his time in Palestine, and asks what such encounters m
ight reveal about the nature of pedagogy and the role of a university under occu
pation.
