Shakespeare and Social Justice

Catalog description

This course explores the relationship between Shakespeare and social justice. Theater and other types of live performance arise out of and give expression to their surrounding cultures. Shakespeare endures over time both because of how he plumbed the depths of human character and modeled different types of justice in his own time, and because diverse perspectives on Shakespearean text and performance have been re-imagined and re-embodied over time. The class will decolonize Shakespeare by examining some of the hidden institutional and cultural aspects of Shakespeare that reinforced a perspective of colonialist power, and it will explore ways in which Shakespearean performance has also been used as a means of cultivating empathy, justice, and a sense of shared humanity and community through such topics as, for example, the use of Shakespeare in prisons, multi-cultural Shakespeares, and Shakespearean activism.