Overview

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 white Shakespeare 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 Moor and Desdemona.

Full Product Details

Author:   Arthur L. Little, Jr. (UCLA, USA) ,  Dr David Ruiter (University of Texas at El Paso, USA) ,  Matthieu Chapman (State University of New York at New Paltz, USA)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   The Arden Shakespeare
ISBN:  

9781350283640

ISBN 10:   1350283649
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   26 January 2023
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction: 'Assembling an Aristocracy of Skin' Arthur L. Little, Jr. (University of California, USA) Part I: Shakespeare's White People Chapter 1 'Two loves I have of comfort and despair:' The Circle of Whiteness in the Sonnets Imtiaz Habib (Old Dominion University, USA) Chapter 2 Staging the Blazon: Black and White and Red All Over Evelyn Gajowski (University of Nevada, USA) Chapter 3 Red Blood on White Saints: Affective Piety, Racial Violence, and Measure for Measure Dennis Austin Britton (University of New Hampshire, USA) Chapter 4 Antonio's White Penis: Category Trading in The Merchant of Venice Ian Smith (Lafayette College, USA) Chapter 5 'Envy Pale of Hew': Whiteness and Division in 'Fair Verona' Kyle Grady (University of California, USA) Chapter 6 Shake thou to look on't : Shakespearean White Hands David Sterling Brown (Binghamton University, SUNY, USA) Chapter 7 'Pales in the Flood': Blood, Soil, and Whiteness in Shakespeare's Henriad Andrew Clark Wagner (University of California, USA) Chapter 8 Disrupting White Genealogies in Cymbeline Joyce MacDonald (University of Kentucky, USA) Chapter 9 White Freedom, White Property, and White Tears: Classical Racial Paradigms and the Construction of Whiteness in Julius Caesar Katherine Gillen (Texas A&M University, USA) Chapter 10 Hamlet and the Education of the White Self Eric De Barros (American University of Sharjah, UAE) Chapter 11 'The Blank of What He Was': Dryden, Newton, and the Discipline of Shakespeare's White People Justin P. Shaw (Clark University, USA) Part II: White People's Shakespeare Chapter 12 Can You Be White and Hear This?: The Racial Art of Listening in American Moor and Desdemona Kim Hall (Barnard College, USA) Chapter 13 White Lies: In Conversation Peter Sellars (UCLA, USA) and Ayanna Thompson (Arizona State University, USA) Chapter 14 A Theatre Practice against the Unbearable Whiteness of Shakespeare: In Conversation Keith Hamilton Cobb (actor, USA), Anchuli Felicia King (playwright and screenwriter, AUS), and Robin Alfriend Kello (University of California, USA) Chapter 15 'The soul of a great white poet': Shakespearean Educations and the Civil Rights Era Jason M. Demeter (Norfolk State University, USA) Chapter 16 'White Anger: Shakespeare's my Meat' Ruben Espinosa (Arizona State University, USA) Chapter 17 'I saw them in my visage': Whiteness, Race Studies, and Early Modern Culture Margo Hendricks (University of California, USA) Chapter 18 The White Shakespearean and Daily Practice Jean E. Howard (Columbia University, USA) Chapter 19 No Exeunt: The Urgent Work of Critical Whiteness Peter Erickson (Northwestern University, USA) Index

Reviews

"Expressing ideas that have developed over several decades of brave and tenacious scholarship, this collection opens a new chapter in the study of Shakespeare and the study of race. It sets out a clear demand for future scholarship, artistic practice, and activism: to produce a Shakespeare that is about “more than whiteness.” With searching intellectual power and heart, White People In Shakespeare demonstrates why the critique of ""whiteness"" is a precondition for understanding Shakespeare in the 21st Century. * Dr. Michael Witmore, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, USA * This big and provocative gathering of established and new voices gives us much of what Shakespeare had to say, in character and verse, about whiteness, as there were just beginning to be ""white people."" Its contributors likewise show the troubling reach of Shakespeare's genius in reproducing hegemonic whiteness across generations. * David Roediger, Foundation Professor of American Studies, University of Kansas, USA *"

Expressing ideas that have developed over several decades of brave and tenacious scholarship, this collection opens a new chapter in the study of Shakespeare and the study of race. It sets out a clear demand for future scholarship, artistic practice, and activism: to produce a Shakespeare that is about more than whiteness. With searching intellectual power and heart, White People In Shakespeare demonstrates why the critique of whiteness is a precondition for understanding Shakespeare in the 21st Century. * Dr. Michael Witmore, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, USA * This big and provocative gathering of established and new voices gives us much of what Shakespeare had to say, in character and verse, about whiteness, as there were just beginning to be white people. Its contributors likewise show the troubling reach of Shakespeare's genius in reproducing hegemonic whiteness across generations. * David Roediger, Foundation Professor of American Studies, University of Kansas, USA *

Author Information

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).

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