The English Miscellany

    Shakespeare: New Voices,  edited by Ian McCormick In Shakespeare: New Voices a diverse range of contributors were asked to rethink, reframe, and recontextualize Shakespeare’s drama in relation to contemporary debates across the academy and public discourse. Accordingly, this new collection presents a variety of new voices emerging out of contemporary Shakespeare and performance studies in the wider context of a global age of culture wars, identity politics, digital transformation, and pedagogic innovation. Shakespeare: New Voices is a bold and necessary collection for our times. It not only examines Shakespeare’s place in twenty-first-century culture but also interrogates the role that literature, performance, and theory can play in social justice movements, intensifying culture wars, and emancipatory pedagogy. In an era marked by global unrest, heightened attention to social justice, and a backlash against ‘wokeness’, Shakespeare’s drama persists as a...

  Long overdue: my first podcast ... Woke Shakespeare: A Conversation.   The History Of European Theatre Podcast   Woke Shakespeare: Rethinking Shakespeare for a New Era  Edited by Ian McCormick and Saptarshi Mallick     Book Reviews "A timely and innovative collection, Woke Shakespeare ... deftly catapults works of The Great Bard into our current historical moment shaped by the notion of "wokeness" and the identity politics of political correctness. Exploring topics ranging from eco-criticism, postcolonialism, queer theory, global studies, social justice, cultural materialism, and more, this book will radically re-shape the myriad ways in which we read Shakespeare today. Required reading for those interested in drawing thematic and ...

  This new collection reveals that Shakespeare’s plays have always been embroiled in political and cultural debates. From the Elizabethan/Jacobean stage to modern classrooms, his works provoke conversation, challenge conventions, and ignite controversy. Nonetheless, Shakespeare’s central position in the traditional cultural establishment is facing renewed scrutiny as some critics start to question whether his works should still occupy a prime position on the syllabus and the stage. Debates about “woke” ideology—emerging in part out of the earlier “culture wars”—have stimulated renewed interest in the role of various schools of critical enquiry, ranging from feminism and gender to queer theory, postcolonialism and race to cultural materialism, global studies to eco-criticism, social class to social justice. The essays in this new collection provide a forum for more diverse voices and debates, seeking to explore how to engage with modern social and political issues in transformativ...

  "Border Crossings: Foucault, Philosophy and Fiction": my contribution to Finding Philosophers in Global Fiction: Redefining the Philosopher in Multi-cultural Contexts (2024) Eds., Anway Mukhopadhyay, Saptarshi Mallick, Debashree Dattaray. Bloomsbury Publishing " What does Foucault’s philosophy tell us about fiction? What does fiction reveal about Foucault’s philosophy? Debates about Foucault’s ideas typically revolve around disputes about their philosophical veracity, legitimacy, or credibility, with widely divergent critical responses ranging from unqualified admiration to outright hostility. Noting how these reactions in critical discourse verge either on the hagiographic or the hostile, the respectful or savagely satirical, it is argued that Foucault’s writings can helpfully illuminate the taxonomic power dynamics in a range of satirical and humorous texts. Two postmodern novels by A.S. Byatt and Patricia Duncker are also discussed, examining wider idea...