Shakespeare and his Contexts: Race, Religion, Sexuality, Gender

Catalog description

This course will explore contexts of race, religion, sexuality and gender in multiple Shakespeare plays (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest), with critical readings on topics including feminist and queer theory, transvestite theater, historically blackface performance, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, forced conversion, competing empires, colonialism and postcolonialism, and racial profiling (among others).