Global Shakespeares

Catalog description

Shakespeare’s plays have been staged around the world, made into novels, films, ballets, musicals, and operas, set in the Wild West, medieval Japan, fascist Italy, and on fictional planets, blended with Bollywood Cinema, Chinese Opera, Zulu dance and Japanese Noh Theater. What do global artists gain from Shakespeare’s works? Studying a handful of Shakespeare’s plays directly, we pay particular attention to race, gender, disability, and religion – issues that are often foregrounded or altered in adaptations. We also deal with the racism, misogyny, ableism, colonialism and anti-Semitism and the real-world violence behind these representations. This lays the groundwork for our study of adaptations from around the world. Some suggest that the Western canon, with Shakespeare at its center, has been used as tools of cultural oppression; might reinventions of Shakespeare be seen as acts of liberation or rebellion? This course participates in the new major and minor in Global Literatures.