Woke Shakespeare: Rethinking Shakespeare for a New Era

 


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 transformative ways.

WOKE SHAKESPEARE is a thought-provoking new volume that engages in fierce contemporary debates surrounding Shakespeare in the age of "woke" cultural politics. Bringing together a diverse range of perspectives, this collection explores the challenges and complexities of teaching and performing Shakespeare in today’s polarized social climate. As media-driven hostility intensifies and cultural panics emerge, WOKE SHAKESPEARE tackles questions about Shakespeare's relevance, representation, and reception among new audiences. How can we navigate new thinking about the struggle for social justice while reimagining Shakespeare's role in a rapidly changing political cultural landscape? This edited volume invites readers to consider a wide range of pressing issues and questions:

  • How does Shakespeare's work intersect with modern political anxieties such as the politics of "woke" and cultural panic?
  • In terms of rethinking identity and human agency, what do Shakespeare’s characters reveal or obscure about today’s debates on race, gender, and social justice?
  • With regard to censorship, safety, and emancipation how should educators approach potentially sensitive content in a way that respects both free speech and inclusivity?
  • To what extent does working with Shakespeare involve global perspectives and postcolonial insights that might contribute to decolonizing the curriculum?
  • How do new platforms, social media conversations, and digital adaptations shape our engagement with Shakespearean texts?

Featuring topics like feminist reinterpretations, queer temporalities, global perspectives and postcolonial adaptations/appropriations, WOKE SHAKESPEARE challenges readers to reconsider Shakespeare’s current contribution to twenty-first-century culture. It is an essential resource for educators, performers, and scholars who wish to grapple with Shakespeare’s contested legacy and explore innovative approaches to his works in an era of political struggle and social transformation.
Whether embracing, resisting, or reinterpreting "woke" ideologies, this book aims to foster a civilized and critical dialogue about Shakespeare’s enduring influence in a world that is constantly redefining itself in line with controversial new ideas about social justice.

Woke Shakespeare: Rethinking Shakespeare for a New Era

 

CONTENTS

1   General Introduction. (Ian McCormick)

2   Visual Hierarchies, Confabulation and the Performance of Power in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, Othello and Much Ado about Nothing. (Nizar Zouidi)

3   “The worser spirit a woman coloured ill”: The Classroom, Wokeness, and the Aesthetics of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. (Subhajit Sen Gupta)

4   “For I Can Here Disarm Thee With This Stick:” Magical (In)Abilities and Transitional Economies in The Tempest. (Michael Williamson)

5   Staying Woke, Doing Shakespeare: Hoping for a Ridiculous Future in Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. (Sam Kolodezh)

6   De-Contextualization in Contemporary Japanese Stagings of Shakespeare’s Plays. (Iryna Kastylianchanka)

7   “Shakespeare and Constitutional Crises: Enduring Political Conversations in Mike Bartlett’s Future History Plays.” (Jarrod DePrado)

8   Hamlet Offstage: Narrative and critical strategies in prose fiction adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. (Myrlin A. Hermes)

9   I Hate the Moor: Internalized Racism in Two Afro-Canadian Othello Adaptations. (Phillip Zapkin)

10   “By Birthright their Mother-Tongue”: Shakespeare, Indigeneity, and Cultural Reclamation in Australia: Kylie Bracknell’s Hecate (2020). (Cato Rooryck)

11   Woke Ecology: Reframing Eco-Shakespeare. (Alys Daroy and Joshua Zeunert)

12   The Winter of Our Discontent: Shakespearean Plays as a tool for Black Feminist Expression. (Linetta Alexander)

13   Woke Futures: Teaching and Research (Ian McCormick and Saptarshi Mallick)

14   Notes on Contributors

15   Bibliography

 

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