Shakespeare and the Pedagogies of Justice: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now , 2019
This book is for teachers who want to heighten the intellectual impact of their courses by using ... more This book is for teachers who want to heighten the intellectual impact of their courses by using their classrooms as a creative space for social formation and action. Its twenty-one chapters provide diverse perspectives on Shakespeare and early modern literature that engage innovation, collaboration, and forward-looking practices. They model ways of mobilizing justice with early modern texts and claim the intellectual benefits of integrating social justice into courses. The book reconceives the relationship between students and Renaissance literature in ways that enable them – and us – to move from classroom discussions to real-life applications.
In our introduction to the first Shakespeare Quarterly special issue on early modern race studies... more In our introduction to the first Shakespeare Quarterly special issue on early modern race studies, Peter Erickson and I spoke of a ‘desire to sing a new scholarly song’ (Erickson and Hall, 2016, 13). Researching my current project, ‘Othello Was My Grandfather: Shakespeare and Race in the African Diaspora,’ I come across many Othello ‘citings’ that defy being folded into a traditional scholarly narrative, and I have been experimenting with incorporating personal voice – my strange style, if you will – in my writing. Responding to Ayanna Thompson’s intervention about the placement of the political investments of early modern race studies and the astute insights of Eric Debarros about the ways my personal experience recedes into the background in my earlier work, this is a personal meditation offering a sense of what it’s like to follow traces of Othello in archives meant to celebrate white achievement (De Barros, 2016, 623–4; Thompson 2008, 259–60).
. . . and the chiefest charitie is that which is most common; nor is there any more common then t... more . . . and the chiefest charitie is that which is most common; nor is there any more common then this of Navigation, where one man is not good to another man, but so many Nations as so many persons hold commerce and intercourse of amity withall; ... the West with the East, and the remotest parts of the world are joyned in one band of humanitie; and why not also of Christianitie? Sidon and Sion, Jew and Gentile, Christian and Ethnike, as in this typicall storie? that as there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptisme, one Body, one Spirit, one Inheritance, one God and Father, so there may be thus one Church truly Catholike, One Pastor and one Sheepfold? (1: 56)
Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 2008
... against the racial politics of anorexia. Acknowledgements Erica Woods Tucker assisted with re... more ... against the racial politics of anorexia. Acknowledgements Erica Woods Tucker assisted with research on this essay. I thank her, Christine Cynn and Constance M. Razza for their insightful comments. Notes on contributor Kim F ...
... 8 Most recently the syllabus included bell hooks, "Feminist Scholarship: Ethical... more ... 8 Most recently the syllabus included bell hooks, "Feminist Scholarship: Ethical Issues" in Talking ... New York and London: Routledge, 1994); and Elizabeth V. Spelman, "Gender & Race ... A specific discussion of this painting, said to be quintessentially Elizabethan, would require ...
This article and the two following were prepared as complementary contributions to a panel of the... more This article and the two following were prepared as complementary contributions to a panel of the American Association for Higher Education conference on ‘Theatre and Cultural Pluralism’, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in August 1992. In the first, Kim F. Hall, from the Department of English at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, describes her experiences as an African American feminist teaching Shakespeare – often against the expectations of students who expect either an affirmation of his supposed universality, a simplistic condemnation of his politically incorrect positions on race and gender – or his appropriation, on behalf of those wishing to stake their own claim to the ‘culture of power’ he is taken to represent. Instead, Kim F. Hall proposes that feminism offers ‘one way of helping students look at Shakespeare ‘multiculturally’, since gender is one area of inquiry that both crosses cultures and forces one to think about the differences between cultures’.
This talk examines the ways that Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor and Toni Morrison and Rokia ... more This talk examines the ways that Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor and Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré’s Desdemona address the whiteness of the various “industries” that discipline black responses to Shakespeare. Their appropriations of Shakespeare’s Othello speak over what W.E.B Du Bois called the color line by performing conversations that highlight the missed readings and over-readings in the play. Drawing on Jennifer Lynn Stoever’s The Sonic Color Line, I suggest that Morrison, Traoré, and Cobb are “theorists of listening” and of whiteness. Their plays demonstrate how Black speech and articulated Black experience are continually conditioned for white consumption. American Moor stages the ways the Black actor’s verbal and emotional exuberance is channeled and shaped by white interlocutors. Desdemona, by resituating Desdemona in the afterlife, is able to work around whiteness’ refusal to hear and create a listening space. Both pieces hold out hope for generative conversations across racial and historical divides, but make clear that true change will take place only with both Black decolonization and white unlearning.
Shakespeare and the Pedagogies of Justice: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now , 2019
This book is for teachers who want to heighten the intellectual impact of their courses by using ... more This book is for teachers who want to heighten the intellectual impact of their courses by using their classrooms as a creative space for social formation and action. Its twenty-one chapters provide diverse perspectives on Shakespeare and early modern literature that engage innovation, collaboration, and forward-looking practices. They model ways of mobilizing justice with early modern texts and claim the intellectual benefits of integrating social justice into courses. The book reconceives the relationship between students and Renaissance literature in ways that enable them – and us – to move from classroom discussions to real-life applications.
In our introduction to the first Shakespeare Quarterly special issue on early modern race studies... more In our introduction to the first Shakespeare Quarterly special issue on early modern race studies, Peter Erickson and I spoke of a ‘desire to sing a new scholarly song’ (Erickson and Hall, 2016, 13). Researching my current project, ‘Othello Was My Grandfather: Shakespeare and Race in the African Diaspora,’ I come across many Othello ‘citings’ that defy being folded into a traditional scholarly narrative, and I have been experimenting with incorporating personal voice – my strange style, if you will – in my writing. Responding to Ayanna Thompson’s intervention about the placement of the political investments of early modern race studies and the astute insights of Eric Debarros about the ways my personal experience recedes into the background in my earlier work, this is a personal meditation offering a sense of what it’s like to follow traces of Othello in archives meant to celebrate white achievement (De Barros, 2016, 623–4; Thompson 2008, 259–60).
. . . and the chiefest charitie is that which is most common; nor is there any more common then t... more . . . and the chiefest charitie is that which is most common; nor is there any more common then this of Navigation, where one man is not good to another man, but so many Nations as so many persons hold commerce and intercourse of amity withall; ... the West with the East, and the remotest parts of the world are joyned in one band of humanitie; and why not also of Christianitie? Sidon and Sion, Jew and Gentile, Christian and Ethnike, as in this typicall storie? that as there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptisme, one Body, one Spirit, one Inheritance, one God and Father, so there may be thus one Church truly Catholike, One Pastor and one Sheepfold? (1: 56)
Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 2008
... against the racial politics of anorexia. Acknowledgements Erica Woods Tucker assisted with re... more ... against the racial politics of anorexia. Acknowledgements Erica Woods Tucker assisted with research on this essay. I thank her, Christine Cynn and Constance M. Razza for their insightful comments. Notes on contributor Kim F ...
... 8 Most recently the syllabus included bell hooks, "Feminist Scholarship: Ethical... more ... 8 Most recently the syllabus included bell hooks, "Feminist Scholarship: Ethical Issues" in Talking ... New York and London: Routledge, 1994); and Elizabeth V. Spelman, "Gender & Race ... A specific discussion of this painting, said to be quintessentially Elizabethan, would require ...
This article and the two following were prepared as complementary contributions to a panel of the... more This article and the two following were prepared as complementary contributions to a panel of the American Association for Higher Education conference on ‘Theatre and Cultural Pluralism’, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in August 1992. In the first, Kim F. Hall, from the Department of English at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, describes her experiences as an African American feminist teaching Shakespeare – often against the expectations of students who expect either an affirmation of his supposed universality, a simplistic condemnation of his politically incorrect positions on race and gender – or his appropriation, on behalf of those wishing to stake their own claim to the ‘culture of power’ he is taken to represent. Instead, Kim F. Hall proposes that feminism offers ‘one way of helping students look at Shakespeare ‘multiculturally’, since gender is one area of inquiry that both crosses cultures and forces one to think about the differences between cultures’.
This talk examines the ways that Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor and Toni Morrison and Rokia ... more This talk examines the ways that Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor and Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré’s Desdemona address the whiteness of the various “industries” that discipline black responses to Shakespeare. Their appropriations of Shakespeare’s Othello speak over what W.E.B Du Bois called the color line by performing conversations that highlight the missed readings and over-readings in the play. Drawing on Jennifer Lynn Stoever’s The Sonic Color Line, I suggest that Morrison, Traoré, and Cobb are “theorists of listening” and of whiteness. Their plays demonstrate how Black speech and articulated Black experience are continually conditioned for white consumption. American Moor stages the ways the Black actor’s verbal and emotional exuberance is channeled and shaped by white interlocutors. Desdemona, by resituating Desdemona in the afterlife, is able to work around whiteness’ refusal to hear and create a listening space. Both pieces hold out hope for generative conversations across racial and historical divides, but make clear that true change will take place only with both Black decolonization and white unlearning.
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