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Forum: Shakespeare and Black America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

PATRICIA A. CAHILL  and
KIM F. HALL
PATRICIA A. CAHILL
Affiliation:
English Department, Emory University. Email: [email protected].
KIM F. HALL
Affiliation:
Department of English, Barnard College/Columbia University. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This introduction both models how one might read race, blackness, activism and Shakespeare and contextualizes the many “Shakespeares” that might be at work in the essays in this cluster, which emerge from the Shakespeare Association of America seminar Shakespeare and Black America. It suggests that scholars in this Shakespearean subfield have political, pedagogical and personal investments that both overlap with and diverge from Shakespeare study as traditionally understood. It addresses some of the complexities of performing, teaching and reading Shakespeare not as an agent of cultural dominion, but as part of resistance and activism in black America.

Type
Forum
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 1 - 11
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2019

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References

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3 The authors would like to thank the contributors to the SAA seminar, not just for their papers, but also for the generative discussion. Several of the points raised in the essay came from questions and concerns raised in Atlanta by participants and auditors, including respondent Emily M. N. Kugler.

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