Blurring Boundaries: Drama as a Critical Multimodal Literacy for Examining 17th-Century Witch Hunts

This article illustrates how critical multimodal literacy practices engage secondary students to further explore differences and similarities between past and present instances of discrimination within a process drama, where students and teachers explore a topic through unscripted role-play. Data from a classroom-based ethnography are drawn on to show how students in two grade 9 social studies classes made meaning from their engagements with a process drama about 17th-century witch hunts. The authors use field notes, interviews, and photographs to reveal some of the complexities of using drama in the classroom, while highlighting the relevance of critical multimodal literacy practices for creating meaningful engagements with curriculum.