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“Shakespeare for All Times and Peoples”: Shakespeare at Spelman College and the Atlanta University Center

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2019

LYNN MAXWELL
LYNN MAXWELL*
Affiliation:
Department of English, Spelman College. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

In this paper I explore what it means to require Shakespeare at a historically black college by looking at Adrienne Herndon's 1906 essay “Shakespeare at Atlanta University” and W. E. B. Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk. Despite the frequent association of Shakespeare requirements with a conservative agenda, both Herndon and Du Bois imagine possibilities for powerful politics in the performance and study of Shakespeare. Reading these two texts together suggests that teaching, studying, and performing Shakespeare might still be powerful politics at black institutions.

Type
Forum
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 66 - 73
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2019

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References

1 American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), The Unkindest Cut: Shakespeare in Exile 2015 (Washington, DC: ACTA, 2015)Google Scholar, available at www.goacta.org/images/download/The_Unkindest_Cut.pdf, accessed 1 Feb. 2017.

2 “Course Information: English Department,” US Naval Academy (USNA), at www.usna.edu/Academics/Majors-and-Courses/course-description/HE.php, accessed 1 Feb. 2017.

3 ACTA, 8.

4 Ibid., 9.

5 Ibid., 10.

6 Thompson, Ayanna, Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 ACTA, 8.

8 For more on Herndon's career and role in promoting black theater see Patricia A. Cahill, “Adrienne Herndon's Homeplaces: Shakespeare and Black Resistance in Atlanta, c.1906,” this issue.

9 Adrienne E. Herndon, “Shakespeare at Atlanta University,” Voice of the Negro, July 1906, 482–86, 486.

10 Ibid., 482.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid., 482.

15 Ibid., 485.

16 Ibid.

17 “Everyman,” Bulletin of Atlanta University, 90 (1909), 2Google Scholar.

18 Du Bois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk, ed. Edwards, Brent Hayes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 75–76Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., 76.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Baldwin, James, “Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare,” in Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Kenan, Randall (New York: Pantheon, 2010), 53–56Google Scholar.

23 See Cahill's, Patricia “Extension Work,” in Callaghan, Dympna and Gossett, Suzanne, eds., Shakespeare in Our Time: A Shakespeare Association of America Collection (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 52–56Google Scholar, for one idea on how to bring the Shakespeare classroom into a larger community.