The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race Cambridge Companions to Literature Series

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable. Moving well beyond Othello, the collection invites the reader to understand racialized discourses, rhetoric, and performances in all of Shakespeare's plays, including the comedies and histories. Race is presented through an intersectional approach with chapters that focus on the concepts of sexuality, lineage, nationality, and globalization. The collection helps students to grapple with the unique role performance plays in constructions of race by Shakespeare (and in Shakespearean performances), considering both historical and contemporary actors and directors. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race will be the first book that truly frames Shakespeare studies and early modern race studies for a non-specialist, student audience.

1. Did the concept of race exist for Shakespeare and his contemporaries?: an introduction Ayanna Thompson; 2. The materials of race: staging the black and white binary in the early modern theatre Farah Karim-Cooper; 3. Barbarian Moors: documenting racial formation in early modern England Ambereen Dadabhoy; 4. Racist humor and Shakespearean comedy Patricia Akhimie; 5. Race in Shakespeare's histories Andrew Hadfield; 6. Race in Shakespeare's tragedies Carol Mejia LaPerle; 7. Experimental Othello Matthew Dimmock; 8. Flesh and blood: race and religion in The Merchant of Venice Dennis Austin Britton; 9. Was sexuality racialized for Shakespeare?: Antony and Cleopatra Melissa E. Sanchez; 10. The Tempest and early modern conceptions of race Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan; 11. Shakespeare, race, and globalization: Titus Andronicus Noémie Ndiaye; 12. How to think like Ira Aldridge Scott Newstok; 13. What is the history of actors of color performing in Shakespeare in the UK? Urvashi Chakravarty; 14. Actresses of color and Shakespearean performance: the question of reception Joyce Green MacDonald; 15. Othello: a performance perspective Adrian Lester; 16. Are Shakespeare's plays racially progressive? The answer is in our hands Miles Grier; 17. How have post-colonial approaches enriched Shakespeare's works? Sandra Young; 18. Is it possible to read Shakespeare through critical white studies? Arthur L. Little.

Ayanna Thompson is Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) and Professor of English at Arizona State University. She is the author of Blackface (2020), Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (2018), Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centred Approach (2016), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (2011), and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (2008). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden3 Othello (2016), and is the editor of Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance (2010) and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (2006). She was the 2018-19 President of the Shakespeare Association of America, and served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars. She was one of Phi Beta Kappa's Visiting Scholars for 2017-2018. She has conceived and organized large-scale interdisciplinary conferences like RaceB4Race.