The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race

Premodern critical race studies, long intertwined with Shakespeare studies, has broadened our understanding of the definitions and discourse of race and racism to include not only phenotype, but also religious and political identity, regional, national, and linguistic difference, and systems of differentiation based upon culture and custom. Replete with fresh readings of the plays and poems, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race brings together some of the most important scholars thinking about the subject today.

The volume offers a thorough overview of the most significant theoretical and methodological paradigms such as critical race theory, feminist, and postcolonial studies; a dynamic look at intersections of race with queer, trans, disability, and indigenous studies; and a vibrant array of new approaches from ecocriticism, to animality, and human rights, from book history, to scholarly editing, and repertory studies; and an exploration of Shakespeare and race in our contemporary moment through discussions of political activism, pedagogy, visual arts, film, and theatre. Woven through the collection are the voices of practicing theatre professionals who have grappled with the challenges of race and racism both in performance and in the profession itself.

Patricia Akhimie, Director, Folger Institute, Folger Shakespeare Library, and Director, RaceB4Race Mentorship Network

Patricia Akhimie is Director of the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and Director of the RaceB4Race Mentorship Network. From 2011 to 2023, she served as Assistant and then Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark, where she received the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching (2021) and the Excellence in Online Teaching Award (2023). She is author of Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Race: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World (Routledge, 2018), co-editor, with Bernadette Andrea of Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), and editor of the Arden Othello (4th series). Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Ford Foundation.

1. Introduction, Patricia Akhimie
PART I. SHAKESPEARE AND RACE: AN OVERVIEW
2. Shakespeare and Critical Race Theory, Urvashi Chakravarty
3. Shakespeare, Race, and Feminist Critique, Jean E. Howard
4. Naturalizing Race and Racialized Geographies, Debapriya Sarkar
5. 'Thrice fairer than myself': Reading Desire and the Ends of Whiteness in Venus and Adonis, Dennis Britton
6. The Imperatives of Race-Consciousness in Twenty-First Century Shakespearean Performance, Farah Karim-Cooper
7. Shakespeare and Race: The Oral Histories, Carla Della Gatta
8. Shakespeare, Race, and Adaptation, Joyce Green MacDonald
PART II. ARCHIVES AND INTERSECTIONS
9. The Oral Histories: Identity, Carla Della Gatta
10. Monstrous Indigeneity and the Discourse of Race in Shakespeare's England, Scott Manning Stevens
11. Shakespeare, Race, and Queer Studies, Mario DiGangi
12. Shakespeare, Race, and Disability: Othello and the Wheeling Strangers of Here and Everywhere, Amrita Dhar
13. Trans Studies at the Crossroad: From Racialized Invisibility to Legibility, Alexa Alice Joubin
14. Racialized Genders on the Shakespearean Stage, Abdulhamit Arvas
15. Shakespeare and Mixed Race, Kyle Grady
16. 'Give me conquer'd Egypt': Re-Orienting Egypt in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra , Ambereen Dadabhoy
17. Coordinating Racisms in The Merchant of Venice, M. Lindsay Kaplan
18. Shakespeare, Race, and Spain, Emily Weissbourd
19. Melancholy Nature: Religion and Bad Faith in Shakespeare, Kimberly Anne Coles
20. Shakespeare, Race, and Movement, Elisa Oh
21. The Oral Histories: On Corporeality, Carla Della Gatta
22. Dispossessed and Unaccommodated: Race and Animality in King Lear, Holly Dugan
23. 'Let fair humanity abhor the deed': Shakespeare, Race, and Human Rights, Kirsten Mendoza
24. Shakespeare, Race, and Science: The Study of Nature and/as the Making of Race, Jennifer Park
25. Race in Repertory, David McInnis
26. 'Rac'd all over their Bodies': Charting the Study of Shakespeare, Race, and Book History, Miles P. Grier
PART III. SHAKESPEARE AND RACE NOW
27. An Interview with Artist Fred Wilson, July 30, 2021, Peter Erickson and Lisa Graziose Corrin
28. Shakespeare and Race on Screen: Racial Journeys in Indian Cinema, Amrita Sen
29. Casting Shakespeare Today, Carla Della Gatta
30. The Oral Histories: Creating Spaces, Carla Della Gatta
31. Shakespeare, Race, and Appropriation, Vanessa I. Corredera
32. The Oral Histories: Staging Shakespeare and Race, Carla Della Gatta
33. Editing Shakespeare and Race, Brandi K. Adams
34. Translation at the Intersections of Shakespeare and Race, Alfredo Michel Modenessi
35. The Oral Histories: Approaches to Acting and Staging, Carla Della Gatta
36. Teaching Shakespeare and Race in Secondary Classrooms: Professional and Political Dimensions of Evolving Pedagogies for Diverse Classrooms, Laura Turchi
37. 'In her prophetic fury': Teaching Critical Modes of Intervention in Shakespeare Studies, Nedda Mehdizadeh
38. Resisting Analogies: Refusing Other Othellos in Shakespearean Cinema, Rebecca Kumar
39. Teaching Shakespeare and Race: Techniques and Technologies, Jonathan Burton
40. Teaching Shakespeare and Race in Communities of Colour: Reflections from the US Mexico Border, Ruben Espinosa
41. The Oral Histories: My Relationship with Shakespeare, Carla Della Gatta
42. 'Reading' Shakespeare as Political Activism, Kim F. Hall