Forum: Shakespeare and Black America

Abstract

This introduction both models how one might read race, blackness, activism and Shakespeare and contextualizes the many “Shakespeares” that might be at work in the essays in this cluster, which emerge from the Shakespeare Association of America seminar Shakespeare and Black America. It suggests that scholars in this Shakespearean subfield have political, pedagogical and personal investments that both overlap with and diverge from Shakespeare study as traditionally understood. It addresses some of the complexities of performing, teaching and reading Shakespeare not as an agent of cultural dominion, but as part of resistance and activism in black America.