Description
What part did Shakespeare play in the construction of a 'white people' and how has his work been enlisted to define and bolster a white cultural and racial identity?
Since the court of Queen Elizabeth I, through the early modern English theatre to the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021, white people have used Shakespeare to define their cultural and racial identity and authority. White People in Shakespeare unravels this complex cultural history to examine just how crucial Shakespeare's work was to the early modern development of whiteness as an embodied identity, as well as the institutional dissemination of a whiteShakespeare in contemporary theatres, politics, classrooms and other key sites of culture.
Featuring contributors from a wide range of disciplines, the collection moves across Shakespeare's plays and poetry and between the early modern and our own time to interrogate these relationships. Split into two parts, 'Shakespeare's White People' and 'White People's Shakespeare', it explores a variety of topics, ranging from the education of the white self in Hamlet, or affective piety and racial violence in Measure for Measure, to Shakespearean education and the civil rights era, and interpretations of whiteness in more contemporary work such as American Moorand Desdemona.
Author: Arthur L. Little Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 01/26/2023
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.38lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.75d
ISBN13: 9781350283640
ISBN10: 1350283649
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Shakespeare
- Social Science | Discrimination
- Drama | Shakespeare
Since the court of Queen Elizabeth I, through the early modern English theatre to the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021, white people have used Shakespeare to define their cultural and racial identity and authority. White People in Shakespeare unravels this complex cultural history to examine just how crucial Shakespeare's work was to the early modern development of whiteness as an embodied identity, as well as the institutional dissemination of a whiteShakespeare in contemporary theatres, politics, classrooms and other key sites of culture.
Featuring contributors from a wide range of disciplines, the collection moves across Shakespeare's plays and poetry and between the early modern and our own time to interrogate these relationships. Split into two parts, 'Shakespeare's White People' and 'White People's Shakespeare', it explores a variety of topics, ranging from the education of the white self in Hamlet, or affective piety and racial violence in Measure for Measure, to Shakespearean education and the civil rights era, and interpretations of whiteness in more contemporary work such as American Moorand Desdemona.
Author: Arthur L. Little Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 01/26/2023
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.38lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.75d
ISBN13: 9781350283640
ISBN10: 1350283649
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Shakespeare
- Social Science | Discrimination
- Drama | Shakespeare
About the Author
Arthur L. Little, Jr. is an associate professor of English at UCLA, USA. He is the author of Shakespeare Jungle Fever: Re-Visions of Race, Rape, and Sacrifice (2000) and Shakespeare and Race Theory (forthcoming, The Arden Shakespeare).