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In the modern world, references to Shakespeare frequently mark moments of catastrophe and of the accompanying longing for restoring social order, remedying injuries, and building strong communities. Shakespeare's moral authority has often been invoked to support artistic projects that claimed social justice as their goal on the assumption that drama has the power to manipulate perceptual reality. Drawing on cases from around the world, this book interrogates the idea that performing or reading Shakespeare has socially reparative value. It also acknowledges Shakespeare as a potential source of social well-being practices in the arts. The global framework shows that it is problematic to view Shakespeare as an impartial moral center.
This book proposes that reparative creativity, or remedial uses of the canon, can give artists and audiences more agency. Having a map of canonical texts' hidden ideologies can help readers, artists, and playgoers navigate its landscape, which is in itself a reparative act.
List of contents
General Editor
List of Contributors
Preface
Alexa Alice Joubin and Natalia Khomenko
1 Theorizing Social Reparation: Introduction to Reparative Global Shakespeare
Alexa Alice Joubin and Natalia Khomenko
Part I British Shakespeare and Soft Power
2 Shakespeare and International (Soft?) Power: Through the Lens of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's Collections
Helen A. Hopkins
3 Shakespearean Neverwheres: Victoria (BC), Anne Hathaway's Cottage, and Nostalgia for "Merry Olde England"
Sarah Crover
Part II Postcolonial Reparation
4 Hamlet in Kashmir, Hamlet as Kashmir: The Politics of Place in Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider (2014)
Afreen Sen Chatterji
5 Can the Rwandese Speak?: European Colonial Legacy in Ben Proudfoot's Rwanda & Juliet (2016)
Cynthia May Martin
Part III Shakespeare and the Holocaust
6 Shylock and the Resentments of Jean Améry
Richard Ashby
7 Repairing Generational Trauma Through Cordelia, Mein Kind: An Interview With Deborah Leiser-Moore
Natalia Khomenko
Part IV Political Mis/Appropriations
8 "A Language I Speak": Shakespearean Explorations in Portuguese, Argentine, and English Prisons
Sheila T. Cavanagh and Maria Sequeira Mendes
9 Feeling With Othello: The Ethical Implications of Ideological Empathy
Natalia Khomenko
Part V Year in Review
10 Race and the "Global" in Shakespeare Studies
Anandi Rao
Index
About the author
Alexa Alice Joubin is General Editor of
The Shakespearean International Yearbook. She is Professor of English, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Theatre, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures at George Washington University in Washington, DC, USA, where she directs the Digital Humanities Institute.
Natalia Khomenko is Co-Editor of
The Shakespearean International Yearbook. She is a lecturer in English Literature at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her current research project focuses on the reception and interpretation of Shakespearean drama in Soviet Russia.
