News

"Shakespeare and Trump" in Lowell's Parker Lecture Series

September 12, 2017

"Shakespeare and Trump"

Jeffrey R. Wilson
Harvard University

Tuesday, September 12, 2017
7 PM
Pollard Memorial Library
401 Merrimack St, Lowell, MA 01852

Presented by the Moses Greeley Parker Lecture Series
parkerlectures.com

During the 2016 election, scholars invented a new kind of criticism: the Shakespeare-inspired commentary on modern US politics. The rise of Donald Trump has drawn comparisons to the Netflix hit House of Cards, based on Shakespeare’s Richard III. Trump’s chief...

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"Shakespeare Against Philosophy" in Shakespeare

July 7, 2017

The essay "To be, or not to be": Shakespeare Against Philosophy was published in the Routledge journal Shakespeare: 

This essay hazards a new reading of the most famous passage in Western literature: “To be, or not to be” from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. With this line, Hamlet poses his personal struggle, a question of life and death, as a metaphysical problem, as a question of existence...

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"The Trouble with Disability in Shakespeare Studies" in Disability Studies Quarterly

June 4, 2017

Jeffrey R. Wilson, "The Trouble with Disability in Shakespeare Studies" in Disability Studies Quarterly: http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5430/4644.

This article reviews some instances of disability in Shakespeare's works and some instances of Disability Studies in Shakespeare studies. Contrary to the claims of the Disabled Shakespeares project, there is no historical basis for the modern language of "disability" in Shakespeare's texts, as illustrated with a philology of the term; this does not, however, invalidate the viable uses...

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"Shakestats" at MLA

January 5, 2017

"Shakestats: Writing About Shakespeare Between the Humanities and the Social Sciences" will be presented on the “Teaching Shakespeare: New Digital Challenges and Solutions” panel at the 2017 MLA convention in Philadelphia. Thanks to Kyle Vitale for organizing the panel. 

"Shakespeare and Trump" on Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory

November 25, 2016

On his Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory podcast, Neema Parvini welcomes Jeffrey R. Wilson (Harvard) to discuss the election of Donald Trump, its impact on the intellectual climate, and some of the ways in which Shakespeare was used in the coverage of the US election. 

https://blogs.surrey.ac.uk/shakespeare/2016/11/25/shakespeare-and-contemporary-theory-34-shakespeare-and-trump-with-jeffrey-r-wilson/

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"Shakespeare on the Classics" and "Why Shakespeare?" at Shakespearean Transformations

September 10, 2016

Two papers - “Shakespeare on the Classics, Shakespeare as a Classic: A Reading of Aeneas’s Tale to Dido” and "Why Shakespeare? Irony and Liberalism in the Canonization Process" - will be presented to the British Shakespeare Association's annual convention, Shakespearean Transformations: Death, Life, and Afterlives, at the University of Hull, U.K.

"Violent Crime as Revenge Tragedy" in This Rough Magic

June 27, 2016

Violent Crime as Revenge Tragedy; Or, How Christopher Dorner Led Criminologists at CSU Long Beach to Shakespeare was published in the Renaissance Teaching journal This Rough Magic.

In February 2013, ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner went on a violent rampage against his former colleagues, a killing spree and manhunt that consumed the attention of Southern California for more than a week...

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