Shakespeare and Youth Culture

This volume deconstructs the underlying assumptions behind youth-culture Shakespeare and then analyzes specific 'texts,' from 10 Things I Hate about You to The Bomb-itty of Errors, from The Sandman to Reviving Ophelia. The authors explore the appropriation of Shakespeare by youth culture and the expropriation of youth culture in the manufacture and marketing of 'Shakespeare.' Considering the reduction, translation, and referencing of the plays and the man, the volume engages the points of confluence between Shakepop and rock, rap, toys, graphic novels, teen films, and pop psychology.

Jennifer Hulbert completed her degree in acting at Denison University, where she was also the recipient of a Provost’s Young Scholar Grant to carry out her research on contemporary feminist adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare  She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. lives and works in Los Angeles, teaching in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Loyola Marymount University.  He is the author of The Athenian Sun in an African Sky, Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy and African-American Theatre, and The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Star Wars Films.  He is the Founding Artistic Director of the Pittsburgh-based Unseam’d Shakespeare Company and has directed or acted in over half the Shakespearean canon. Robert L. York is an Assistant Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana in Sellersburg. Also a poet and songwriter, York has released an independent compact disc of ten songs, Neverever, in 2002.

"Nobody Outcrazies Ophelia!": Reducing, Translating, and Referencing Shakespeare for Youth * Smells Like Teen Shakespirit, or The Shakespearean Films of Julia Stiles * Are You Shakesperienced? Rock and Roll and the Production of Shakespeare * Big Willie Style: Hip Hop and Being Down with the Bard * Adolescence, Thy Name is Ophelia": The Ophelia-ization of the Contemporary Teenage Girl * This Bard's for You