09 Jun What Is a Shakespeare?: Shakespeare and Global Media
Conveners:
Leticia García, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
lcgarcia@ucsb.edu
Grace Kimball, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
gracekimball@ucsb.edu
Shaun Nowicki, English
shaunnowicki@umail.ucsb.edu
Anita Raychawdhuri, English
araychawdhuri@ucsb.edu
“What Is a Shakespeare?: Shakespeare and Global Media” is an interdisciplinary group of graduate students and faculty focused on investigating the notion of ‘global Shakespeare.’ We are interested in understanding both the ways that Shakespeare has been adapted in a global context and how an emphasis on Shakespeare has obscured other valuable insights culturally, socially, theoretically, and politically. As a versatile team of scholars and practitioners, we are invested in rethinking Shakespeare and his current global resonances in a multitude of intersecting ways. Our group is not simply interested in theoretical considerations of how one might interpret global Shakespeares, but also how one might perform, experience, or teach global Shakespeares.
Our cohort’s research focus is organized around a series of questions, including:
- What does it mean to do ‘global Shakespeare’ in the first place?
- What counts as ‘global Shakespeare’?
- How has Shakespeare been used as a marker of value in global performance?
- What are the goals of artists when they embark on creating a ‘global Shakespeare’?
- What does it mean when an audience lauds a production of Shakespeare as ‘global’?
- Can we think beyond the notion of ‘the global’?
