Craig Dionne - Böcker

Explored in this essay collection is how Shakespeare is rewritten, reinscribed and translated to fit within the local tradition, values, and languages of the world's various communities and cultures. Contributors show that Shakespeare, regardless of the medium - theater, pedagogy, or literary studies - is commonly 'rooted' in the local customs of a people in ways that challenge the notion that his drama promotes a Western idealism. Native Shakespeares examines how the persistent indigenization of Shakespeare complicates the traditional vision of his work as a voice of Western culture and colonial hegemony. The international range of the collection and the focus on indigenous practices distinguishes Native Shakespeares from other available texts.

Offers historical and present-day perspectives on what English departments do, and how and why they do it.These provocative essays explore the unwritten, often unacknowledged codes, conventions, and ideologies overseeing the evolution and current practice of English as a "discipline." The first section of the book offers historical perspectives: how "composition" became distinguished from "literature," how key intellectuals shaped the discipline, and how various specialties-Renaissance literature, American literature, "theory"-became subfields. The second section focuses on how certain aesthetic categories of art and universal experience persist today in the actual teaching and writing of "English." While it is fashionable to say that we are living in the age of poststructuralism, or that literary theory has delivered us from idealized conceptions of authorship and inherent meaning, these essays examine how these conceptions nevertheless remain and are transmitted: in different types of classroom settings, in textbooks, and in the self-fashioning of academic careers. At a time when the role and function of English departments have become matters of both academic and public debate, this book will be a welcome resource for students, professionals, and anyone interested in the Culture Wars of the past two decades.

Explored in this essay collection is how Shakespeare is rewritten, reinscribed and translated to fit within the local tradition, values, and languages of the world's various communities and cultures. Contributors show that Shakespeare, regardless of the medium - theater, pedagogy, or literary studies - is commonly 'rooted' in the local customs of a people in ways that challenge the notion that his drama promotes a Western idealism. Native Shakespeares examines how the persistent indigenization of Shakespeare complicates the traditional vision of his work as a voice of Western culture and colonial hegemony. The international range of the collection and the focus on indigenous practices distinguishes Native Shakespeares from other available texts.

An investigation of the issues affecting the teaching of Shakespeare in non-elite public universities and private liberal arts colleges in the US, combined with a set of imaginative responses to those problems.Shakespeare in Tempestuous Times investigates the place of Shakespeare where almost all US students encounter his work—at non–elite public universities and small liberal arts colleges. Increasingly, these students are taught by contingent or overstretched tenured professors.Growth in higher education has been constant over the past fifty years, fueled by democratization. But lately, democratization has lost its allure: higher education is too expensive, too politicized, and students and families think hard about the investment. And now higher education faces another daunting challenge, a demographic cliff, beginning in 2026: a reduction of approximately 15% in the college-age cohort in the decade following. Already over the past ten years, for-profit institutions have failed, small non-profit four-year colleges have closed, and many public state systems have consolidated. More will follow. How do professors cope aboard what feels like a sinking ship?This volume offers answers to that question, while assessing the limits of those answers by highlighting the structural constraints we face. Colleagues are becoming generalists, or even do not teach literature at all; Shakespeare, long considered untouchable, now struggles to survive; Shakespeareans, too.This is the hand we are dealt, which we must play whether we acknowledge it, see it as a double bind, or choose to ignore it altogether. On the Titanic, the orchestra played familiar, upbeat pieces as the ship went down, trying to prevent panic. Heroic, true, but what this volume explores is whether preventing panic by reciting what's familiar is the answer we need.