This essay offers a cross-historical, politically responsive reading of one line from Titus Andro... more This essay offers a cross-historical, politically responsive reading of one line from Titus Andronicus: "My fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls" (2.3. 34). No critic, to my knowledge, has ever noticed this description as anything more than an obvious representation of its speaker's, Aaron's, racial difference; film, for its part, has either cut it from the script or kept it as an unperformed and therefore oddly inconsequential line. Specifically, what has not been explored or explained is the performative magic of a Black man straightening his kinky "black" hair in a Roman forest on an early modern stage. Addressing and drawing on the under-appreciated interdisciplinary value of a Black Studies critical consciousness, this essay argues that Aaron's hair straightening represents Shakespeare's racialization of Ovid's Metamorphoses in an effort to develop for England a liberating, pro-creative alternative to the Roman literary tradition. In this regard, Titus is an anti-colonial play, and Aaron its anti-colonial hero. And it is through the application of Ovidian magic to his hair—like the application of a poetic hot comb or hair relaxer—that Shakespeare imagines a post-colonial future for England.
The topic of race has long enriched Shakespeare scholarship. Race scholarship remains marginalize... more The topic of race has long enriched Shakespeare scholarship. Race scholarship remains marginalized in the broader world of Shakespeare studies. The simultaneous “truth” of these statements reveals a deeply rooted professional ambivalence. And while recent attention has been paid to its manifestation at conferences and in journals, this essay explores its challenge to black teacher–scholars in the majority-white classroom. Rethinking The Merchant of Venice as an educational play, with Portia and Shylock performing as nontraditional teachers, I develop the concept of “teacher trouble” from Judith Butler's “gender trouble” to reflect personally on the perils and liberatory potential of antiracist performative strategies.
Over the past couple decades, countless critics have disputed the applicability of Edward Said’s ... more Over the past couple decades, countless critics have disputed the applicability of Edward Said’s Orientalism to Western representations of the early modern East. Such representations, they argue, are characterized by non-authoritarian, cross-cultural negotiations, not the later Western colonial dominance central to Said’s analysis. The problem, however, is that this otherwise useful re-orientation depends on simplifying distortions of Said’s theoretical premise and interpretive methodology. Rather than recognize Said’s Palestinian identity position as legitimately defining his postcolonial historicism, these critics dismiss his conclusions as anachronistic: simply stated, as “bad” historicism. Characterized by what I term the gatekeeping politics of “good” historicism, such dismissals, I argue, represent the political denial of Saidian and other personally inflected forms of historicist criticism as a condition of professional entry and socio-political legitimacy. Rejecting this condition, I conclude by exploring the Orientalist implications of “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam,” an early modern text widely praised as pre-Orientalist.
Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteen... more Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteenth century, Erasmus, in his lengthy commentary on The Labors of Hercules adage, attempts to justify his thankless and debilitating scholarly work by analogizing it to the ...
Rooting his pedagogy in an Orwellian commitment to exploring the relation between writing and the... more Rooting his pedagogy in an Orwellian commitment to exploring the relation between writing and the cultural forces that shape it, Eric L. De Barros takes up linguistic complexity itself as a pedagogical model in this chapter. De Barros sees Shakespeare’s texts as a “weapon” to use against a range of lazy habits of mind, from bardolatry to consumerist approaches to higher education. He describes how he invites students to examine their own subject positions and ethical priorities in conversation with Shakespeare’s plays; how this engagement spurs conversations about issues from racialized beauty and consent to social mobility and criminality; and finally, how students parlay these insights into practical strategies for addressing related issues in their own lives. Fusing thoughtful intertextual engagements with close reading and autobiographical student writing, De Barros seeks to develop a “personally inflected, politically responsive” Shakespeare capable of combating cultural forces...
Attempting to push early modern presentism to the radical, logical conclusion of a more personal ... more Attempting to push early modern presentism to the radical, logical conclusion of a more personal historicism, this essay draws on a number of interpretive practices and theoretical insights – Stephen Greenblatt’s self-reflectivity, Toni Morrison’s ‘rememory’, Marianne Hirsch’s ‘postmemory’, bell hooks’s ‘passion of experience’, and Linda Charnes’s alternative historicism – to establish the ethical and interpretive significance of my own painful situatedness as an African American man in Renaissance/Early Modern studies. Specifically, I illustrate that significance in a reading of Richard Mulcaster’s Positions Concerning the Bringing Up of Children, a sixteenth-century educational treatise that responds, as I argue, to early modern educational access and social mobility with an insidiously complex, exclusionary admissions policy.
Over the past couple decades, countless critics have disputed the applicability of Edward Said’s ... more Over the past couple decades, countless critics have disputed the applicability of Edward Said’s Orientalism to Western representations of the early modern East. Such representations, they argue, are characterized by non-authoritarian, cross-cultural negotiations, not the later Western colonial dominance central to Said’s analysis. The problem, however, is that this otherwise useful re-orientation depends on simplifying distortions of Said’s theoretical premise and interpretive methodology. Rather than recognize Said’s Palestinian identity position as legitimately defining his postcolonial historicism, these critics dismiss his conclusions as anachronistic: simply stated, as “bad” historicism. Characterized by what I term the gatekeeping politics of “good” historicism, such dismissals, I argue, represent the political denial of Saidian and other personally inflected forms of historicist criticism as a condition of professional entry and socio-political legitimacy. Rejecting this condition, I conclude by exploring the Orientalist implications of “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam,” an early modern text widely praised as pre-Orientalist.
Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteen... more Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteenth century, Erasmus, in his lengthy commentary on The Labors of Hercules adage, attempts to justify his thankless and debilitating scholarly work by analogizing it to the ...
Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteen... more Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteenth century, Erasmus, in his lengthy commentary on The Labors of Hercules adage, attempts to justify his thankless and debilitating scholarly work by analogizing it to the ...
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.
This essay offers a cross-historical, politically responsive reading of one line from Titus Andro... more This essay offers a cross-historical, politically responsive reading of one line from Titus Andronicus: "My fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls" (2.3. 34). No critic, to my knowledge, has ever noticed this description as anything more than an obvious representation of its speaker's, Aaron's, racial difference; film, for its part, has either cut it from the script or kept it as an unperformed and therefore oddly inconsequential line. Specifically, what has not been explored or explained is the performative magic of a Black man straightening his kinky "black" hair in a Roman forest on an early modern stage. Addressing and drawing on the under-appreciated interdisciplinary value of a Black Studies critical consciousness, this essay argues that Aaron's hair straightening represents Shakespeare's racialization of Ovid's Metamorphoses in an effort to develop for England a liberating, pro-creative alternative to the Roman literary tradition. In this regard, Titus is an anti-colonial play, and Aaron its anti-colonial hero. And it is through the application of Ovidian magic to his hair—like the application of a poetic hot comb or hair relaxer—that Shakespeare imagines a post-colonial future for England.
The topic of race has long enriched Shakespeare scholarship. Race scholarship remains marginalize... more The topic of race has long enriched Shakespeare scholarship. Race scholarship remains marginalized in the broader world of Shakespeare studies. The simultaneous “truth” of these statements reveals a deeply rooted professional ambivalence. And while recent attention has been paid to its manifestation at conferences and in journals, this essay explores its challenge to black teacher–scholars in the majority-white classroom. Rethinking The Merchant of Venice as an educational play, with Portia and Shylock performing as nontraditional teachers, I develop the concept of “teacher trouble” from Judith Butler's “gender trouble” to reflect personally on the perils and liberatory potential of antiracist performative strategies.
Over the past couple decades, countless critics have disputed the applicability of Edward Said’s ... more Over the past couple decades, countless critics have disputed the applicability of Edward Said’s Orientalism to Western representations of the early modern East. Such representations, they argue, are characterized by non-authoritarian, cross-cultural negotiations, not the later Western colonial dominance central to Said’s analysis. The problem, however, is that this otherwise useful re-orientation depends on simplifying distortions of Said’s theoretical premise and interpretive methodology. Rather than recognize Said’s Palestinian identity position as legitimately defining his postcolonial historicism, these critics dismiss his conclusions as anachronistic: simply stated, as “bad” historicism. Characterized by what I term the gatekeeping politics of “good” historicism, such dismissals, I argue, represent the political denial of Saidian and other personally inflected forms of historicist criticism as a condition of professional entry and socio-political legitimacy. Rejecting this condition, I conclude by exploring the Orientalist implications of “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam,” an early modern text widely praised as pre-Orientalist.
Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteen... more Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteenth century, Erasmus, in his lengthy commentary on The Labors of Hercules adage, attempts to justify his thankless and debilitating scholarly work by analogizing it to the ...
Rooting his pedagogy in an Orwellian commitment to exploring the relation between writing and the... more Rooting his pedagogy in an Orwellian commitment to exploring the relation between writing and the cultural forces that shape it, Eric L. De Barros takes up linguistic complexity itself as a pedagogical model in this chapter. De Barros sees Shakespeare’s texts as a “weapon” to use against a range of lazy habits of mind, from bardolatry to consumerist approaches to higher education. He describes how he invites students to examine their own subject positions and ethical priorities in conversation with Shakespeare’s plays; how this engagement spurs conversations about issues from racialized beauty and consent to social mobility and criminality; and finally, how students parlay these insights into practical strategies for addressing related issues in their own lives. Fusing thoughtful intertextual engagements with close reading and autobiographical student writing, De Barros seeks to develop a “personally inflected, politically responsive” Shakespeare capable of combating cultural forces...
Attempting to push early modern presentism to the radical, logical conclusion of a more personal ... more Attempting to push early modern presentism to the radical, logical conclusion of a more personal historicism, this essay draws on a number of interpretive practices and theoretical insights – Stephen Greenblatt’s self-reflectivity, Toni Morrison’s ‘rememory’, Marianne Hirsch’s ‘postmemory’, bell hooks’s ‘passion of experience’, and Linda Charnes’s alternative historicism – to establish the ethical and interpretive significance of my own painful situatedness as an African American man in Renaissance/Early Modern studies. Specifically, I illustrate that significance in a reading of Richard Mulcaster’s Positions Concerning the Bringing Up of Children, a sixteenth-century educational treatise that responds, as I argue, to early modern educational access and social mobility with an insidiously complex, exclusionary admissions policy.
Over the past couple decades, countless critics have disputed the applicability of Edward Said’s ... more Over the past couple decades, countless critics have disputed the applicability of Edward Said’s Orientalism to Western representations of the early modern East. Such representations, they argue, are characterized by non-authoritarian, cross-cultural negotiations, not the later Western colonial dominance central to Said’s analysis. The problem, however, is that this otherwise useful re-orientation depends on simplifying distortions of Said’s theoretical premise and interpretive methodology. Rather than recognize Said’s Palestinian identity position as legitimately defining his postcolonial historicism, these critics dismiss his conclusions as anachronistic: simply stated, as “bad” historicism. Characterized by what I term the gatekeeping politics of “good” historicism, such dismissals, I argue, represent the political denial of Saidian and other personally inflected forms of historicist criticism as a condition of professional entry and socio-political legitimacy. Rejecting this condition, I conclude by exploring the Orientalist implications of “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam,” an early modern text widely praised as pre-Orientalist.
Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteen... more Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteenth century, Erasmus, in his lengthy commentary on The Labors of Hercules adage, attempts to justify his thankless and debilitating scholarly work by analogizing it to the ...
Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteen... more Abstract: Frustrated with the anti-intellectualism and academic conservatism of the early sixteenth century, Erasmus, in his lengthy commentary on The Labors of Hercules adage, attempts to justify his thankless and debilitating scholarly work by analogizing it to the ...
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.
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