English 546: Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism > Updates


For Tuesday, December 16 (Day 29):

I'll hold regular office hours on Monday from 1:00-2:30, though as always, I may start a bit earlier and end a bit later. And I'll be holding "class" in my office on Tuesday morning from (ahem) 8:00(-ish) to 9:50, where I will receive your final essays and shower you with confetti. Or compliments. Well, I'll at least smile and wave. Since December 16 is also Beethoven's birthday, I'll put his Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Minor (known as "The Tempest") on "repeat" in iTunes.

Between now and then, I'll be endeavoring yet again to catch up on grading. If you're not sure where you stand, grade-wise, going into the home stretch, then let me know and I'll perform some calculations.

I'll hold onto your work for at least one semester. If you'd like to pick it up in the spring, I'd also be glad to pull it out then, re-read it, and give you a little feedback. If you'd just like to get it back it back into your hands, sans comments, then please give me a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Best of success on your

For Thursday, December 11 (Day 28):

Shakespeare in the Philippines, brought to you by Naomi. And some final remarks from yours truly.

For Tuesday, December 9 (Day 27):

Forecast for Tuesday: more heavy weather, with periods of transculturation (brought to you Pier Paolo Frassinelli, via Robin).

Terms to look up (in Postcolonialism: The Key Concepts, say--or its predecessor, Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies [available online]): the aforementioned transculturation, along with mimicry and ambivalence. And possibly counter-discourse.

For Thursday, December 4 (Day 26):

Une Tempête, Day 2. It would be spiffy if a significant number of people could bring their copies Shakespeare's Tempest to class, as well.

For Tuesday, December 2 (Day 25):

I'm spending much of my week off trying to catch up on grading in three classes. Slated for the days after Thanksgiving, when I'll be all logy from l-triptophan: your Tempest posts. (Not sure yet when I'll get to Shakespeare Wallah.) I will also open a forum for the other Tempest (the one preceded by an indefinite rather than definite article), and it may even contain a few reading questions!

Have a happy and productive week off, yourselves! There's a reminder/clarification about the next batch of required reading in the previous post, below.

For Thursday, November 20 and Tuesday, December 2 (Days 24 & 25)

Thursday is a workday. I'll be in my office during class hours if you want to drop in to talk about term paper ideas.

May you have a restful break with just a little too much food and drink and just enough family. When we return, it's back into the eye of the storm--er, tempest--from a different angle. Read Césaire and Dabydeen (8 quiz questions and 2 quiz questions, respectively). Since you have two weeks, let's add Rob Nixon into the mix, too. And check out the other reading and web resources as you have time.

Links:

And if you're skint:

For Tuesday, November 18 (Day 23)

Laura will be talking about two short chapters from Martin Orkin's Local Shakespeares. (You can tackle the Introduction to Poonam Trivedi's India's Shakespeare on your own.) Spirited discussion will ensue. And then perhaps it will morph organically into that focused-discussion-with-lots-of-references-to-germane-passages-from-the-film that we meant to have today. In preparation for this, read your colleagues' Moodle posts. And ponder their questions.

Because I haven't given you a link in a while:

  • Here's an interview with Joseph Marcell, the St. Lucian-born actor playing the title role in the Globe Theatre's production of King Lear, coming to Center Arts on November 30.

For Thursday, November 13 (Day 23)

Campus is closed on November 11 in observance of Veterans Day (originally Armistice Day). When we come back: in light of what Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia (in Native Shakespeares) dub the “explosion of critical interest in the way Shakespeare has been made to accommodate local cultures across the globe” (5), we will discuss how (as Ania Loomba puts it) Shakespearian transformations “comment on the nature of colonial exchanges and cultures” (114). Perhaps looking more closely at Lizzie and her not-quite-romance with Sanju will elucidate how Shakespeare Wallah in particular “comments” on such exchanges. We will of course keep in mind that a simple “binary division between colonial and anti-colonial, between Western and indigenous cultures, is not adequate” for understanding any of the “cultural phenomena” she discusses (Loomba 130).

You should read the essay by Jyotsna Singh (and re-read the one by Loomba) in the online course reader and look at as much of the recommended reading and as many of the websites as you can make time for. I may or not prepare a mini-lecture than amplifies and elaborates upon Singh before we begin a proper discussion of the film and screenplay.

For Thursday, November 6 (Day 22)

We'll view the rest of Shakespeare Wallah, have a quiz (on the screenplay and Loomba, but not Singh--though you're welcome to read her piece, too), and chat a bit. Moodle posts aren't due till Wednesday the 12th.

For Tuesday, November 4 (Day 21)

We begin screening Shakespeare Wallah. (We'll finish it Thursday, after which we'll have a quiz based on the screenplay--O Joy!--with two questions on Loomba's article, even though the latter is officially on the docket for the following week.)

For Thursday, October 30 (Day 20):

Paul and Marcos play Prospero and demand that we hearken to their instruction (about Peter Hulme). If we murmur, they will rend an oak and peg us in its knotty entrails. In the course of things, we may finally make time to examine all the rebellions and revelations and absolutions that Prospero stage-manages. And who knows? We could even trot out those discussion questions again.

In the news:

  • "Kashmiri 'Hamlet' Stirs Rage in India" (New York Times 28 October 2014): journalists generally don't have any control over the headlines that editors give their stories. The Orientalist subtext of this one: those fractious Indians are prone to violence and rage. The Times's review of Haider, "Shakespearean Revenge in a Violent Kashmir," appeared some weeks earlier. (Haider is the latest from director Vishal Bardwaj, most famous for two other Shakespearean adaptations, Maqbool and Omkara.)

And elsewhere on the interwebs:

For Tuesday, October 28 (Day 19):

More assigned secondary reading on The Tempest. Meanwhile, Jamie will tell us about one of the foundational texts of postcolonial Shakespeare studies, Paul Brown's "'This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine': The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism." (In case you want to read it, here's a link.)

Also: we'll consider the dramas that Prospero stages (and why), and the one that he doesn't--quite (and why).

Finally: a link to an article I was reminded of by an e-mail from Netflix yesterday, notifying me that the latest Hunger Games movie is available for streaming. Othello-phobia is alive and well in contemporary America.

For Thursday, October 23 (Day 18):

Keep up on yer assigned reading. We'll continue to work out the nature of Prospero's power by visiting Caliban, our slave, who never yields us kind answer, and then perhaps we'll do a bit more compare-and-contrast of Caliban and Prospero's other subalterns. And go on from there.

"Ulp!" Department: "Scene from the American 'Tempest'" (prepare to have your hair raised; some context here).

For Tuesday, October 21 (Day 17):

Have a Tempestuous weekend. (Other required reading, too, of course.)

From my collection of links: a slightly hair-raising story from HuffPo about black and fair on the runway back in 2012.

For Thursday, October 16 (Day 16):

SonnetFest: we sing ambiguous praises to the Dark Lady. Open your hymnals to numbers 130, 131, and 132 (and 138, 144, 147, and 152).

Linky (forget about Moodle posts; I'm a week behind on the New York Times): Multiculturalism in Ptolemaic Egypt.

For Tuesday, October 14 (Day 15):

(Late-breaking update for Indigenous People's Day, as we close in on The Tempest: Howard Zinn on Columbus.)

Shall I compare thee to a Shakespearean sonnet? We move from one dark lady to another.

I highly recommend the Oxford UP version of the sonnets which I've provided as a PDF; I'm also asking you to read Kim F. Hall's "'These bastard signs of fair.'" (Of course, you can't go wrong checking out the Web Resources and/or the Recommended Reading.)

I know you're all sick of the quizzes, but...there's another one coming. Although I won't ask you, say, to match random lines with their sonnet numbers, I might well ask you to complete the rhyme of a notable concluding couplet, and I do think it would be a good idea to become especially familiar with some of the more celebrated sonnets (e.g., 127, 130, 144, 147). As in past weeks, the final two questions will address not the primary text(s), but the critical essay by Hall.

For Thursday, October 9 (Day 14):

I'll have a take-home midterm ready for the one (two?) people who requested one. (Please: no need to thank me!) You'll be able to choose among three essay prompts that ask you to reflect back on several of the works we've read so far in relation to each other and to some common theme(s). And we'll spend another day lolling about indolently with Antony & Cleopatra. Heavy eye-liner optional.

Get a jump on the sonnets and read the rest of the required material from the Norton Critical edition of A & C. And go ahead: have a gander at some of the recommended stuff in the online course reader (c'mon now: who could resist a title like "Framing Antony's Anatomy"?).

For Tuesday, October 7 (Day 13):

Walk like an Egyptian: we begin Antony & Cleopatra (plus supplemental reading). Be ready for a reading quiz, of course. Study questions? Maybe--but I know that you will include some kick-ass questions in your reading responses.

Betsy sends this link, which you can use, she says, to gain "a better understanding of the Roman conquest of Britain and how/why England came to mythologize Roman rule the way it has." As for the Roman Empire in the era of the triumvirate: the timeline in the Norton edition is helpful, but I'm sure the Beeb has something about that, too. (Click on "More Romans.")

Thanks again to all three of this week's presenters. A plea: I know we can't control our health, but unless you're contagious and/or incapacitated, I'm trusting you to make every effort not to miss class on days when presentations are scheduled. Your fellow presenters will appreciate having as large and supportive an audience as we can muster. And you yourself may benefit from observing their efforts, even if you've already presented, but especially if you've not.

For Thursday, October 2 (Day 12):

Sam presents Mark Burnett's "'As it is credibly thought'" or Karen Newman's "'And wash the Ethiop white'"--both of which deal with the idea of the "monstrous." (And both of which are in the Recommended Reading section.)

Meanwhile, Dan tackles "The Stranger of Here and Everywhere," the final chapter of Emily Bartels's Speaking of the Moor.

For Tuesday, September 30 (Day 11):

What's "fairness" got to do with femininity? (That's an allusion to Hall 6, in case you'd forgotten.) And what other Stories of Marriage and the Household (Hall 13-18)--and Femininity, for that matter--circulate in this play (especially, perhaps, among men)?

A propos of these and other matters, Betsy will hep us to Michael Neill's "Unproper Beds." (You can read it for yourself, if you're so inclined; it's part of the "Recommended" Reading for Othello.)

I'm sure there's more to be said about what Robin, citing Hall, names "anxieties about the potency of hypersexual foreign others," not to mention being, seeming, and the unsettling possibility of conversion. Also: anybody got a handkerchief?

Linkage: the dramatic reading (on YouTube) that Marcos mentioned.

For Thursday, September 25 (Day 10):

Othello, Day 2. (That's pretty much all I got. But you could read your comperes' DF posts.)

Actually...links:

For Tuesday, September 23 (Day 9):

All assigned reading (including the play itself, of course) is fair game for the quiz. And of course you're always encouraged to check out the "Recommended" reading (might I especially suggest Eldred Jones's The Elizabethan Image of Africa?) and the Web Resources.

Study questions if and when I devise 'em. (You've been doing pretty nicely on your own, actually, so...emphasis on "if.") In the meantime, I would just note that Kim Hall regularly ends paragraphs throughout her Introduction with one or more pointed and provocative questions. Nothin' wrong with those.

I'll be getting to your most excellent Mercantile Moodlings over the weekend. Let's make that a long weeked (i.e., including Monday).

Linky: The Bard Sells Bud (1908). And (from the New York Times) "Another Trial for Shylock." Oh--and that word I was searching for in class? "Phenotype."

For Thursday, September 18 (Day 8):

It's not too early to get started on Othello and related reading, I suppose. For our last day on Merchant, we'll start with "liminality" and see what other zones we cross, besides.

Today's links:

  • In re:the "Is Venice England/Is Rome England?" question: a couple of years ago in The New Yorker, Adam Kirsch considered what "Rome" meant to the Romans, to Shakespeare, and to us. And:
  • Think that strange, nebulous admixture of proto-racism, xenophobia and religious bigotry that our assigned critics keep talking about is confined to the early modern period? Not to hear Thomas Frank tell it (that is, if you can make out his argument beneath a thick layer of sardonicism).

For Tuesday, September 16 (Day 7):

Merchant, Day 3. We'll return to your questions and pick up where we left off--but do also scroll down and take a(nother) gander at my questions. Apart from that, use the weekend to review the required and/or recommended supplementary reading (emphasis on Ania Loomba and Kim Hall).

Presentation spec sheet is online. (Article assignments: coming soon.)

Meanwhile: lots o' links ('cuz who doesn't need to spend more time trolling the Internet?):

And while I'm at it, a reminder about primers on post-colonialism:

  • Deepika Bahri's Short Intro at Emory University's Postcolonial Studies site is okay, if a bit outdated, while
  • The Johns Hopkins Guide's two-part entry on "Postcolonial Cultural Studies" is both more current and more comprehensive, though it is pitched at a more advanced audience.
  • Reading widely in Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin's Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies is bound to help. (The link is for an eBook version of the first edition, but the third edition appeared last year.)
  • But as I told you on the first day of class: I think the single best introduction to the field is Colonialism/Postcolonialism by (who else?) Ania Loomba. The link is for an eBook version of the first edition (1998); a second edition appeared in 2005.

For Thursday, September 11(Day 6):

We'll continue our discussion of Merchant with the aid of the on-screen questions we had in class today, which I've collected below (or you could actually go to the Moodle forum and read the prose that precedes each one--I highly recommend it, in fact!):

Robin
Keeping in mind the context in which Shakespeare was writing—the rise of mercantilism, the promise of wealth and empire—what, if anything, is Shakespeare trying to say about wealth and who is entitled to it? Do his Christian characters deserve to end up with all the money by merit, or do they do so because they are Christians and “citizens,” and therefore that is the natural order of things?

Dan
Do [we] believe Shakespeare to be critiquing a treatment of Jews that he finds to be deplorable, [or] pandering to audience expectations, [or] tipping his hand in regard to his own anti-Semitism, or some combination thereof?

Jamie
Is Jessica supposed to be read/viewed as a sympathetic character? How do you think the "unwashed masses" are supposed to react to her?

Sam
Could it be, as [Samuel] Kleinberg reminds us, that Antonio’s racism is not rooted in a hate for Jews, but in a hate for himself as a homosexual, which he symbolically projects on a people who, like him are also not accepted in sixteen century Venice?

Laura Gorman
1) how do we understand the conditions of the bond, [specifically] the pound of flesh as payment?  And 2) knowing some of the historical background that both Gillies and Loomba present, do we understand Shylock's motivations [better]?

Naomi
Does Shakespeare draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable trade?  Is there an economic line that should not or cannot be transgressed? 

Paul
Portia’s speech on “the quality of mercy” is certainly one of the most powerful parts of The Merchant of Venice, yet it [prompts] the question: what was Shakespeare’s purpose in placing such an eloquent petition against so many actions and statements that depict the exact opposite? Why does he have Portia beg Shylock to show mercy on Antonio after previously displaying none herself, and then proceed to mercilessly dismantle all he has worked to build?

Betsy
Given the conversation between Shylock and Antonio in Act 1, Scene 1 about spotted sheep, the “particolored lambs” that Jacob was blessed with (73-93), the overt disdain for Morocco’s coloring, and Jessica and Shylock being contrasted as white and black, respectively, should we be reading more into Antonio being “tainted”?

Marcos
Do you think Shylock is justified in wanting to exact revenge upon Antonio for treating him like a dog? If he is not justified, can we at least understand his motivations for desiring to kill Antonio?

And then of course there are my questions in the previous update, below.

Link miscellany:

For Tuesday, September 9 (Day 5):

The Merchant of Venice. We'll start with a mercantile quiz. (You know what to expect now, right? Like last time: all required reading is fair game.) Study questions below. Don't forget to glance at web links on the Merchant page in the Course Reader.

I'll open up a Merchant forum on Moodle, but you're still welcome to post afterthoughts about Titus to the first one. For my own last words on Titus, I'll defer to Emily Bartels, from whose essay I was occasionally borrowing in today's class:

I want to argue that the association of the Moor with the alien is not what is given [in Titus Andronicus], but what must be made—and made against the odds of a society that takes its very definition from conquest and so depends, even thrives, on the cultural intermixing that is the predictable result.  Crisis occurs not because...[Rome’s] assumed sanctity [is] undone by the presence or the exposure of the alien within.  Crisis occurs because at an arbitrary moment in history Rome attempts to lay down the law and postulate an...ideal of cultural purity...That the ideal is acted out on and over the body of one embedded Moor is neither inevitable nor even entirely plausible within the dramatic fiction...(68). 

“Certainly,” Bartels later concludes,

the discovery of [Aaron and Tamora’s] baby does prompt Rome’s alienation and punishment of Aaron.  Yet the “cause” is neither clearly nor simply anxiety about miscegenation or the consequent replication of blackness that the baby, as a racial icon, makes obvious.  The play moves us beyond this kind of abstracting ideology, insisting instead that the baby’s figuration and fate derive from pressing political contingencies, involving the support or subversion of  the Roman regime.  For by coincidence not design, Aaron’s son poses both a practical problem for the seated Goths who would secure that regime [it “betrays the empress’s adultery and so undermines her place (and their places) in the court”] and a practical solution for the ascendant Romans who would instead undo it, and what makes the difference…is not a generalized color prejudice but particularized political aim....What ultimately matters to the Goths is not what black, in the abstract, is but what, in the particular context of “fair-faced breeders,” black does. (92-3)

You can read more on your own in the "Recommended Reading," if you're intrigued.

Those study questions:

  • What do you suppose we should make of the fact that the value of most everything in this play—including human relationships—is calculated (figuratively speaking, at least) in “mercantile” terms, in the language of markets and commerce, accounting and finance, credit and debt?
  • Is there any useful connection to be drawn between Antonio’s diverse speculative ventures abroad and Portia’s many suitors from abroad?  How do these foreign “interests” factor into the two characters' respective “net worths”?
  • What would you say is the basis of the animosity between Shylock and Antonio?
  • What do you make of Shylock’s defense of his financial practices in 1.3.73ff.? [“ff.” means “and following,” in case you didn't know...]
  • Is there some significance to the fact that of all Portia’s would-be husbands, the Moor is the one we first meet?  What do you make of his appearance (and his speech—and the conditions imposed upon him in the three-casket bargain)?
  • What’s the deal with the joke that Launcelot plays on his father in 2.2—and his subsequent jibes and warnings about genetic inheritance later in the play (3.5, e.g.)?  (For that matter, there’s an awful lot of joking and punning about paternity, “flesh,” “stones,” etc. throughout the play, from a lot of different characters. Comment?)
  • Fathers, daughters, ducats: Portia and Jessica: compare/contrast.
  • Do you see any contradiction between the ostensible cause of Bassanio’s financial need and the ultimate outcome of his romantic suit?
  • As it was in Titus, law and mercy seem to be pitted against each other in this play.  Are the terms and/or the outcome of the conflict different here?   (What does Shylock’s speech, 4.1.90ff., have to do with this?  Are we supposed to feel pity for Shylock in the end?  Has he been ill-used, or gotten his just desserts?)

For Thursday, September 4th (Day 4):

We didn't cover a lot of ground today, admittedly, but next time we'll pick up where we left off and try to make more headway though Titus. Read (be selective, or speed-read, if necessary) your peers' Moodle posts and give some preliminary thought to their discussion questions. Do the same for mine. Okay...go!

Link Miscellany:

For Tuesday, September 2nd (Day 3):

Titus Andronicus and associated stuff; see the Course Reader. A relatively light load this time, to make up for last time. (You could take advantage of the long weekend to get a jump on The Merchant of Venice, though!) Be ready for a reading quiz; all required reading is fair game.

There is one other essay I considered putting in the "Recommended" section: Ian Smith's "Those 'slippery customers': Rethinking Race in Titus Andronicus" (Journal of Theatre and Drama 3 [1997]). Smith aims to give us one means of interpreting Aaron as something other than a stock "incarnation of evil" by examining certain trends in the Elizabethan-era study of rhetoric in the context of the "racialization" of blackness. "Conventional approaches to reading Aaron as a villain whose delight in cruelty and evil makes him appear repulsive," Smith avers, "ignore the fact that his fictional acts are the product of a culturally conditioned set of English responses to Africans derived from a variety of textual sources" (55).

The theoretical portions of Smith's argument (as laid out in Sections II and IV) seem a bit convoluted and--to me, at least--not entirely convincing. More compelling is his reading of certain textual details of the play in Sections III and V. And his introduction (the first two or three pages of the essay) offers plenty of food for thought.

We didn't really get into the nitty-gritty of Loomba's "genealogy" of race in the Elizabethan era, but given what I heard in class today, I'm fairly confident that I don't need to police your reading comprehension. As long as you "get" her claims about the "fluidity" of race in Shakespeare's time; the "complex articulation between [race and] skin colour, religion, ethnicity, and nationality"; the coevalness of modern and older meanings of race; and the Shakespearean stage as a "conduit" for shaping attitudes about race and colonialism, you should be all right.

(But: Interested in reading more about how the Elizabethan ideal of "white" feminine beauty was frequently reinforced by strategic juxtapositions with blackness? Let me recommend Kim F. Hall's 1996 article in Shakespeare Quarterly, "Beauty and the Beast of Whiteness: Teaching Race and Gender.")

Below are some "starter" reading & discussion questions on Titus, but remember that one of your duties is to append a well crafted discussion question to your reading response. Speaking of which: I'll post and/or e-mail some additional guidelines (and open up a forum on Moodle) soon. Oh--and we'll soon need to figure out the batting order for presentations, as Othello isn't that far off. (That's as much a reminder for me as it is for you.)

  • The play opens by foregrounding the question of legitimacy: who will rule Rome, and by what right; from what does imperial authority derive?  How is that question complicated throughout the play?  Is it ever settled?
  • Another question related to legitimacy and the rule of law is that of civility and barbarism (which Loomba takes up on pp. 82-3).  Are you persuaded that Rome is “naturally” a civil place, and/or that Tamora and her sons are “lustful” and intemperate because they’re barbarian Goths?  (What should we do with the fact that so many of the putative “good guys” are in many ways—in both word and deed—so unsympathetic?)
  • The play’s plot hinges repeatedly on Lavinia’s chastity and honor—even moreso than on Tamora’s lasciviousness and duplicity.  How is this connected to the debate over what is “unnatural and unkind” (5.3.46)? 
  • Where does Aaron fit into all this?  What the heck is he doing here?  Why, as Loomba puts it on p. 82, do “we have a figure of black malignity in a play which is otherwise about the Gothic-Roman wars”?
  • Aaron is maligned as the “breeder” of the play’s “foul events.”  Care to comment on that claim—or to expound on the resonances of that term?
  • Shakespeare is famous for giving some of his best speeches—often speeches that call into question the pieties and orthodoxies on which the established order is based, or that call out the hypocrisies and injustices of the protagonists—to his villains.  Are there any such speeches in this play?
  • There’s a recurring suggestion (from Marcus and Lucius, mainly) that Rome is messed up primarily because it’s insufficiently grateful to warriors like Titus, who have devoted their lives to going off into the hinterlands and ensuring Rome’s security by conquering its barbaric enemies.  That’s  the principal “injustice” which must be addressed.  Does the claim have any merit?

For Thursday, August 28th (Day 2):

Concentrate on the assigned reading. Take notes. Ask questions. Draw connections. Find recurring themes. Stop periodically to test your comprehension and retention by attempting to summarize the last few paragraphs you read. I may have mentioned in class that, to the extent I can stay a week ahead of you, I will sometimes lay some reading questions on you. Here are a few dull questions about the introductory assignment for Thursday. You bring in some more pointed ones:

  • What sorts of views and opinions of Shakespeare and his work are you yourself bringing to this class—views and opinions formed on the basis of either received wisdom or independent judgment?  (If they include some variation on the word “greatness”: what is it, exactly, that makes him and his work “great”?)
  • What, more specifically, have you been taught about Shakespeare?  How have you been encouraged to read him—i.e., what sorts of things have you been encouraged to look for and see in his plays?
  • What, as you see it, does it/would it mean to make “Empire, race, colonialism and cultural difference” “central” to the study of Shakespeare (as Ania Loomba puts it in “Shakespeare and Cultural Difference,” one of the recommended essays for Thursday)?  What sorts of stories might the plays tell us, viewed through such a lens?  Would those stories be different from those the plays are “normally” understood to tell, do you think? 
  • (A question best answered after doing all the reading, perhaps:)  What do you see as the main point of Singh and Shahani’s review-slash-reconsideration of “postcolonial” Shakespeare studies, fifteen years on?  How does or doesn’t their piece speak to Loomba and Orkin’s introduction to Post-Colonial Shakespeares?
  • Name three important/surprising/puzzling things—or more than three, if you like—that you learned about the evolving concept of “race” in Elizabethan England from Loomba’s “‘Delicious traffick’” and/or Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism.  Do any of these things retrospectively affect your understanding of a Shakespeare play with which you were already familiar?

I flashed, but didn't dwell on, the "General Reference" page of the course website in class today. Have a look-see. I'll be adding new stuff as I (and you) find it.

Here are links to/about a few things I mentioned in my lecture: New Historicism, Stephen Greenblatt, Representations, George Will's "Literary Politics" column and Greenblatt's response. On the topic of New Historicism, you could also try:

  • "Introduction to New Historicism" (Dino Felluga, Purdue University): "General Introduction" and "Terms and Concepts" are the most useful sections.
  • "The New Historicism" (Bedford/St. Martin's virtuaLit)
  • New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: a one-off blog (as far as I can tell) in which "Heather" outlines--simplistically, perhaps--the distinctions between New Historicism and Cultural Materialism. These two related critical traditions of the past several decades are perhaps less distinct than "Heather" suggests; nevertheless, this can be a helpful starting point for getting a handle on the basic premises of these closely related "new" brands of historicism.

Looking for a PDF reader that lets you annotate what you read? Three options that I know of: Adobe's free "Reader" and its rather more elaborate "Digital Editions" (also free); and "Zotero," a full-featured research tool originally developed as a Firefox-for-Windows plug-in, now available for Chrome and Safari and as a stand-alone.

Other Link Miscellany:

"S" is for Shakespeare

Chris Sims (of Chris's Invincible Super-Blog) comments: "Sadly, all copies of the Eighth Folio version of Hamlet, which included Laertes seeking vengeance as 'a Bat-Man,' were lost to the ages."
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