Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America

Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America

Oxford University Press
April 2011
240 pages
Hardback ISBN13: 9780195385854; ISBN10: 0195385853

Ayanna Thompson, Professor of English
Arizona State University

Notions, constructions, and performances of race continue to define the contemporary American experience, including America’s relationship to Shakespeare. In Passing Strange, Ayanna Thompson explores the myriad ways U.S. culture draws on the works and the mythology of the Bard to redefine the boundaries of the color line.

Drawing on an extensive—frequently unconventional—range of examples, Thompson examines the contact zones between constructions of Shakespeare and constructions of race. Among the questions she addresses are: Do Shakespeare’s plays need to be edited, appropriated, updated, or rewritten to affirm racial equality and retain relevance? Can discussions of Shakespeare’s universalism tell us anything beneficial about race? What advantages, if any, can a knowledge of Shakespeare provide to disadvantaged people of color, including those in prison? Do the answers to these questions impact our understandings of authorship, authority, and authenticity? In investigating this under-explored territory, Passing Strange examines a wide variety of contemporary texts, including films, novels, theatrical productions, YouTube videos, performances, and arts education programs.

Scholars, teachers, and performers will find a wealth of insights into the staging and performance of familiar plays, but they will also encounter new ways of viewing Shakespeare and American racial identity, enriching their understanding of each.

Features

  • Productively engages a topic of perennial debate: race and Shakespeare
  • Offers first sustained examination of the relationship between contemporary American constructions of Shakespeare and race
  • Explores the seldom considered ways Shakespeare has infiltrated American popular culture, from films like the screwball comedy Bringing Down the House to DIY performances on YouTube

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • 1. Introduction: The Passing Strangeness of Shakespeare in America
  • 2. Universalism: Two Films that Brush with the Bard, Suture and Bringing Down the House
  • 3. Essentialism: Meditations Inspired by Farrukh Dondy’s novel Black Swan
  • 4. Multiculturalism: The Classics, Casting, and Confusion
  • 5. Original(ity): Othello and Blackface
  • 6. Reform: Redefining Authenticity in Shakespeare Reform Programs
  • 7. Archives: Classroom-Inspired Performance Videos on YouTube
  • 8. Conclusion: Passing Race and Passing Shakespeare in Peter Sellars’s Othello
  • Works Cited
  • Index
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