Introduction
Bate, Jonathan. The Genius of Shakespeare. Picador, 1997.
Carson, Christie, and Peter Kirwan, editors. Shakespeare and the Digital World: Redefining Scholarship and Practice. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Desmet, Christy. “Shakespeare and the Digitized Word.” CEA Critic, vol. 78, no. 2, 2016, pp. 213-228.
Dobson, Michael. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Authorship, 1660–1769. Clarendon, 1992.
Fazel, Valerie M., and Louise Geddes, editors. The Shakespeare User. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare and Modern Culture. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Holland, Peter, editor. “Writing About Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Survey, vol. 58, 2005.
Kermode, Frank. “Writing About Shakespeare.” London Review of Books, 9 Dec. 1999.
Kottman, Paul, editor. Philosophers on Shakespeare. Stanford University Press, 2008.
Lupton, Julia Reinhard. Thinking With Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Lynch, Jack. Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard. Walker, 2007.
O’Neill, Stephen, editor. Broadcast Your Shakespeare: Continuity and Change Across Media. Bloomsbury, 2017.
O’Neill, Stephen, editor. “Shakespeare and Digital Humanities: New Perspectives and Future Directions.” Humanities, vol. 8, no. 2, 2019.
Presley, Erin. “‘Ol' Billy Shakes’: Shakespeare in the Blogosphere.” Borrowers and Lenders, vol. 2, 2006,
Sherbo, Arthur. The Birth of Shakespeare Studies. Colleagues, 1986.
Schoenbaum, Samuel. Shakespeare’s Lives. Clarendon Press, 1970.
Taylor, Gary. Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present. Oxford University Press, 1991.
Vickers, Brian, editor. Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. 6 vols. Routledge, 1974.
Chapter One
An Oral History of Public Shakespeare
Primary Sources
Marjorie Garber, "The Bard Meets the Undead," New York Times (Nov. 25, 1994).
Stephen Greenblatt, “Friends, Americans, Countrymen…,” New York Times (Oct. 3, 2004).
Paula Marantz Cohen “Shylock, My Students, and Me.” The American Scholar (December 1, 2009).
James Shapiro, "Hollywood Dishonors the Bard," New York Times (Oct. 16, 2011).
Noah Berlatsky, "Shakespeare's Conservatism," The Atlantic (Aug. 5, 2014).
Hannah Walser, “I Crave the Law,” Arcade (Dec. 20, 2014).
Stephen Greenblatt, “Teaching a Different Shakespeare From the One I Love,” The New York Times Magazine (Sept. 11, 2015).
James Shapiro, "Shakespeare in Modern English?" New York Times (Oct. 7, 2015).
Stephen Greenblatt, “Shakespeare Explains the 2016 Election,” The New York Times (Oct. 8, 2016).
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, “If a Shakespeare play is racist or antisemitic, is it OK to change the ending?” The Guardian (Nov. 3, 2017).
Alicia Andrzejewski, "Ophelia’s Rue," Synapsis (Nov. 26, 2017).
Kathryn Vomero Santos, “WTF, Shakespeare,” Shakespeare Quarterly Web Exclusives.
Austin Tichenor, “Shakespeare’s patriotic empathy,” Shakespeare & Beyond (July 13, 2018).
Michæl Lutz, "Love/Alters/Not: Bisexuality, History, and the Present," Medium (Sept. 12, 2018).
Yuan Yang, “The Bard in Beijing: how Shakespeare is subverting China,” Financial Times (Oct. 5, 2018).
Gary Taylor, “Death of an English Major,” Tampa Bay Times (Nov. 9, 2018).
Rebecca Yearling, “Snowflakes and Trigger warnings: Shakespearean Violence has Always Upset People,” The Conversation (Nov. 22, 2018).
Jane Hwang Degenhardt, "Between Shakespeare, the World, and Me," The Rambling 3 (Jan. 26, 2019).
Emily Lanthrop, "Teaching and Taming: On Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew and #MeToo," The Rambling 3 (Jan. 26, 2019).
Carol Mejia LaPerle, "Suicide and State Power at the Columbus Statehouse and in Othello," The Rambling 3 (Jan. 26, 2019).
Laura Kolb, “The Very Modern Anger of Shakespeare’s Women,” Electric Literature (Feb. 6, 2019).
Elizabeth Winkler, "Was Shakespeare a Woman," The Atlantic (June 7, 2019). Plus Responses by David Scott Kastan, Phyllis Rackin, James Shapiro, Mark Rylance, and David Ellis, "Shakespeare and Company," The Atlantic (June 8, 2019).
Marcos Gonsalez, "Caliban Never Belonged to Shakespeare," Literary Hub (July 26, 2019).
James Shapirio, "An Unexpected Letter from John Paul Stevens, Shakespeare Skeptic," The New Yorker (Aug. 6, 2019).
Ruben Espinosa, "Shakespeare and Your Mountainish Inhumanity,” The Sundial (Aug. 16, 2019).
David Sterling Brown, "The “Sonic Color Line”: Shakespeare and the Canonization of Sexual Violence Against Black Men,” The Sundial (Aug. 16, 2019).
Katherine Gillen and Lisa Jennings, "Decolonizing Shakespeare? Toward an Antiracist, Culturally Sustaining Praxis,” The Sundial (Nov. 26, 2019).
Kimberly Anne Coles, Kim F. Hall, and Ayanna Thompson, "BlacKKKShakespearean: A Call to Action for Medieval and Early Modern Studies," Profession (Fall 2019).
Erin Blakemore, "The Rowdy Women of Early Modern Theater,” JSTOR Daily (Jan. 1, 2020).
Moeko Fujii, “Let them Misunderstand: Seeing Shakespeare with Ninagawa,” The Point (Jan. 28, 2020).
Dominic Cavendish, "The Woke Brigade are Close to ‘Cancelling’ Shakespeare,” The Telegraph (Feb. 9, 2020).
James Shapiro, "The Mirror That Shakespeare Holds Up to America,” The Wall Street Journal (March 5, 2020).
Jeffrey R. Wilson, "Which of Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes is Donald Trump?” New York Daily News (April 13, 2020).
Jeffrey R. Wilson, "10 Scenes from Shakespeare that Fit Donald Trump’s Presidency — Streaming Now,” MarketWatch (April 17, 2020).
Emma Smith, "How to Read Shakespeare for Pleasure,” The Conversation (April 21, 2020).
Ayanna Thompson, “From Wall Street to Shakespeare,” Transformations (May 28, 2020).
Scott Newstok, "We Would All Do Well to Think More Like Shakespeare,” Dallas Morning News (May 31, 2020),
Tana Wojczuk, "How Shakespeare Paperbacks Made Me Want to Be a Writer,” New York Times Magazine (June 2, 2020).
Brandi K. Adams, "The King, and Not I: Refusing Neutrality,” The Sundial (June 9, 2020).
Secondary Sources
Albanese, Denise. Extramural Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Bergeron, David, editor. Reading and Writing in Shakespeare. University of Delaware Press, 1996.
Espinosa, Ruben. “Diversifying Shakespeare.” Literature Compass, vol. 13, no. 2, 2016.
Doty, Jeffrey S. Shakespeare, Popularity, and the Public Sphere. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Fernie, Ewan. Shakespeare for Freedom: Why the Plays Matter. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Hawkes, Terence. Shakespeare in the Present. Routledge, 2002.
Murphy, Andrew. Shakespeare for the People: Working-Class Readers, 1800–1900. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Newstok, Scott L., and Harry Berger, Jr. “Harrying after VV.” Shakespeare Yearbook, vol. 18, Shakespeare After 9/11: How a Social Trauma Reshapes Interpretation, edited by Matthew Biberman and Julia Reinhard Lupton, 2011, pp. 141-52.
O'Dair, Sharon, and Timothy Francisco, editors. Shakespeare and the 99%: Literary Studies, the Profession, and the Production of Inequity. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Prince, Kathryn. Shakespeare in the Victorian Periodicals. Routledge, 2008.
Wu, Duncan. William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man. Oxford University Press, 2008.
Wood, Nigel, editor. “Shakespeare and the Public Sphere.” Shakespeare, vol. 14, no. 1, 2018.
Scheil, Katherine. She Hath Been Reading: Women and Shakespeare Clubs in America. Cornell University Press, 2012.
Weimann, Robert. Author's Pen and Actor's Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare's Theatre. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Yachnin, Paul. “The Crisis in the Humanities—What Would Shakespeare do?” Humanities, vol. 5, no. 2, 2016, 31.
Chapter Two
What Shakespeare Scholars Can Learn from Theater Makers About Public Engagement
Primary Sources
Sheaffer, Adam. “Building Public(s): The Early History of the New York Shakespeare Festival.” Dissertation. Maryland--College Park, 2018.
Chapter Three
Public Shakespeare as Performance
Primary Sources
Ben Cohen, "The Infectious Pestilence Did Reign,” Slate (March 10, 2020).
Emma Smith, "'Out damned spot': The Lady Macbeth Hand-Washing Scene that Became a Coronavirus Meme,” Penguin Books (March 12, 2020).
Sarah Enloe, “Teaching Shakespeare With Play from Far Away,” American Shakespeare Center (March 13, 2020).
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, “Shakespeare Wrote His Best Works During a Plague,” The Atlantic (March 14, 2020).
Kathryn Harkup, “Why Shakespeare Would have been Obsessed with Coronavirus,” The Telegraph (March 15, 2020).
Emma Smith, "Top Five Shakespeare Plays that Speak to the 21st Century,” The Independent (March 16, 2020).
Emily Temple, "So Shakespeare Wrote King Lear During a Plague. Well, Good for Him, Say All the Writers," Lit Hub (March 16, 2020).
Andrew Dickson, “Shakespeare in Lockdown: Did he Write King Lear in Plague Quarantine?” The Guardian (March 22, 2020).
Simon Godwin, "An Unsung Masterpiece Finds Its Moment of Truth in the District,” The Washington Post (March 27, 2020).
Ian Wheeler, “Shakespeare Survived Quarantine With a Little Help From His Patrons,” New York Times (March 26, 2020).
Emma Smith, “What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Living With Pandemics,” New York Times (March 28, 2020).
Paul Budra, "What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About Conspiracy Theories Today,” CBC Radio (March 31, 2020).
Emma Smith, "The Page's the Thing – Take It from Shakespeare's Earliest Readers,” The Guardian (April 1, 2020).
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, "What Shakespeare Actually Did During the Plague," The New Yorker (April 1, 2020).
Katherine Scheil, "Celebrating Shakespeare in a Pandemic,” University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts (April 1, 2020).
Paul Yachnin, "After the Plague, Shakespeare Imagined a World Saved from Poison, Slander and the Evil Eye,” The Conversation (April 5, 2020).
Kate Maltby, "What Shakespeare Can -- and Can't -- Teach us About Covid-19,” CNN (April 8, 2020).
James Shapiro, "The Shakespeare Play That Presaged the Trump Administration’s Response fo the Coronavirus Pandemic,” The New Yorker (April 8, 2020).
Laura Jayne Wright, "Shakespeare on Zoom: How a Theatre Group in Isolation Conjured up a Tempest,” The Conversation (April 23, 2020).
"5 Shakespeare Scholars on the Past, Present, and Future of Theater Amid COVID-19,” Literary Hub (April 23, 2020).
Emma Smith, "Shakespeare’s Answer to the Plague? More Sex and Comedy,” Prospect (April 23, 2020).
Scott Newstock, "How to Think like Shakespeare (Quarantine Edition),” Linked In (April 23, 2020).
Alexis Soloski, "Is This a Livestream I See Before Me?” New York Times (May 13, 2020).
Gemma Allred and Ben Broadribb, "Lockdown Shakespeare: the State of (the) Play,” ‘Action is eloquence’: (Re)thinking Shakespeare (May 18, 2020).
Emily Pitts Donahoe, "Troilus and Cressida and a Diseased Body Politic: Reading Shakespeare in a Time of Plague,” Public Seminar (May 28, 2020).
Alan Gillespie, "Has Coronavirus Signalled the End for Shakespeare?” TES (June 8, 2020).
Gary Taylor, "What Hamlet Can Teach Us About Black Lives Matter,” Tampa Bay Times (June 14, 2020).
Secondary Sources
Aebischer, Pascale. “Viral Shakespeare: Binge-Watching Hamlet in Lockdown.” The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, 20 May 2020.
Cahill, Patricia A., and Kim F. Hall, editors. “Forum: Shakespeare and Black America.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 54, 2020.
Kennedy, Colleen E. “Shakespeare, the plague, and the contemporary theatrical response.” The Early Modern Quarantine Conference, 26 June 2020.
Sullivan, Erin. “‘The forms of things unknown’: Shakespeare and the Rise of the Live Broadcast,” vol. 35, no. 4, 2017, pp. 627-662.
Way, Geoffrey. “Together, Apart: Liveness, Eventness, and Streaming Shakespearean Performance.” Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 35, no.3, 2017, pp. 389-406.
Chapter Four
Public Shakespeare in the Classroom
Primary Sources
Iman Lavery, “What Shakespeare Can Tell Us About School Shootings,” Public Seminar (Dec. 12, 2018).
Alex Grayson, "Disney Meet Shakespeare," Northern Kentucky Tribune (May 3, 2019).
Philip LaPorte, "The Bard and Bollywood," Spectator USA (May 7, 2019).
Jordan Mubako, "Learning to Hate Shakespeare," Public Seminar (June 17, 2019).
Seven Richmond, "The Outcast State: Shakespeare’s Unlikely Connection to Black Subjectivity," Public Seminar (June 18, 2019).
Mercedes Sapuppo, "How Shakespeare Helps Us Challenge the Far-Right in Europe," Public Seminar (June 19, 2019).
Max Serrano-Wu, "An Unexpected Concertmaster: How Shakespeare Influenced the Romantic Era," Public Shakespeare (June 20, 2019).
Luke Williams, "Shakespeare on Helicopter Parenting," Public Seminar (June 22, 2019).
Secondary Sources
Baker, Kelly J. “Writing for a Public Audience.” Cold Takes, 31 July 2019.
Bell, Henry, and Amy Borsuk, editors. “Teaching Shakespeare: Digital Processes.” Research in Drama Education, vol. 25, no. 1.
Bond, Sarah E., and Kevin Gannon. “Public Writing and the Junior Scholar.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 Oct. 2019.
Churchwell, Sarah, and Devoney Looser. “Public Engagement: Academics Writing in Public.” MLA Convention, 11 Jan. 2020.
Cottom, Tressie McMillan. “Risk and Ethics in Public Scholarship.” Inside Higher Ed, 9 Dec. 2012.
Cottom, Tressie McMillan. “‘Who Do You Think You Are?’: When Marginality Meets Academic Microcelebrity.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, no. 7,
Dumitrescu, Irina. “What Academics Misunderstand About ‘Public Writing’,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 July 2020.
Eklund, Hillary, and Wendy Beth Hyman, editors. Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now. Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Espinosa, Ruben. “Beyond The Tempest: Language, Legitimacy, and La Frontera,” The Shakespeare User, edited by Valerie M. Fazel and Louise Geddes, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 41-62.
Genovese, Holly. “How to Get Started in Freelance Writing.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 Sept. 2019.
The Op Ed Project. “Op-ed Writing: Tips and Tricks.” https://www.theopedproject.org/oped-basics.
Pryal, Katie Rose Guest. “10 Questions Every Academic Should Ask Before Writing for the Public.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1 Dec. 2019.
Pryal, Katie Rose Guest. “Public Writing in Uncertain Times.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 Sept. 2020.
Pryal, Katie Rose Guest. The Freelance Academic: Transform Your Creative Life and Career. Blue Crow, 2019.
Thompson, Ayanna, and Laura B. Turchi, Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centred Approach. Bloomsbury, 2016.
Chapter Five
Historicizing Presentism: From Shakespeare Studies to Public Humanities
Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken, 1968, pp. 253–64.
Bruster, Douglas. “The New Materialism in Early Modern Studies.” Shakespeare and the Question of Culture: Early Modern Literature and the Cultural Turn, Palgrave, 2003, pp. 191–205.
DiPietro, Cary. “Sex, Lies and Videotape: Representing the Past in Shakespeare in Love, Mapping a Future for Presentism.” Shakespeare, vol. 3, no. 1, 2007, pp. 40–62.
DiPietro, Cary, and Hugh Grady. “Presentism, Anachronism, and the Case of Titus Andronicus.” Shakespeare, vol. 8, no. 1, 2012, pp. 44–73.
———, editors. Shakespeare and the Urgency of Now: Criticism and Theory in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Drakakis, John. “Shakespeare as Presentist.” Shakespeare Survey, vol. 66, 2013, pp. 177–87.
Fendler, Lynn. “The Upside of Presentism.” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, vol. 44, no. 6, 2008, pp. 677–90.
Fernie, Ewan. “Shakespeare and the Prospect of Presentism.” Shakespeare Survey, vol. 58, 2005, pp. 169–84.
Fish, Stanley. Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change. Harvard UP, 1995.
———. Save the World on Your Own Time. Oxford UP, 2008.
Gajowski, Evelyn. “Beyond Historicism: Presentism, Subjectivity, Politics.” Literature Compass, vol. 7, no. 8, 2010, pp. 674–91.
Grady, Hugh. “A Postmodernist Shakespeare: The Current Critical Context.” Shakespeare’s Universal Wolf: Studies in Early Modern Reification, Oxford UP, 1996, pp. 1–25.
———. “Presentism, Walter Benjamin, and the Search for Meaning in King Lear.” Shakespeare, vol. 5, no. 2, 2009, pp. 145–61.
———. “Shakespeare Studies, 2005: A Situated Overview.” Shakespeare, vol. 1, no. 1–2, 2005, pp. 102–20.
———. “Terence Hawkes and Presentism.” Critical Survey, vol. 26, no. 3, 2014, pp. 6–14.
———. “Whiteness, Past and Present: Reading Antony and Cleopatra in the Obama Era.” 41st Annual Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference, 21 Oct. 2017, Baldwin Wallace University, Berea, OH.
Grady, Hugh, and Terence Hawkes, editors. Presentist Shakespeares. Routledge, 2007.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Introduction. The Forms of Power and the Power of Forms in the Renaissance, special issue of Genre, vol. 15, no. 1–2, 1982, pp. 3–6.
———. “Towards a Poetics of Culture.” The New Historicism, edited by H. Aram Veeser, Routledge, 1989, pp. 1–14.
Hadfield, Andrew. “Shakespeare and Republicanism: History and Cultural Materialism.” Textual Practice, vol. 17, 2003, pp. 461–83.
Harris, Jonathan Gil. “The New New Historicism’s Wunderkammer of Objects.” European Journal of English Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2000, pp. 125–39.
Hawkes, Terence. Shakespeare in the Present. Routledge, 2002.
Hedrick, Donald, and Bryan Reynolds. “Shakespace and Transversal Power.” Shakespeare without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital, edited by Reynolds and Hedrick, Palgrave, 2000, pp. 3–47.
Holbo, John. “Shakespeare Now: The Function of Presentism at the Critical Time.” Literature Compass, vol. 5, no. 6, Nov. 2008, pp. 1097–110.
Hunt, Lynn. “Against Presentism.” Perspectives on History, 1 May 2002, www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/....
Kastan, David Scott. Shakespeare after Theory. Routledge, 1999.
King, Ros. “Dramaturgy: Beyond the Presentism/Historicism Dichotomy.” Shakespearean International Yearbook, vol. 7, 2007, pp. 6–21.
“Manifesto of the V21 Collective.” V21 Collective, v21collective.org/manifesto-of-the-v21-collective-ten-theses/. Accessed 8 May 2019.
Marx, Karl. “Theses on Feuerbach.” Marx/Engels Selected Works, translated by W. Lough, Progress Publishers, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 13–15.
Montrose, Louis Adrian. “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture.” The New Historicism, edited by H. Aram Veeser, Routledge, 1989, pp. 15–36.
Mullen, Mary L. “Public Humanities’ (Victorian) Culture Problem.” Cultural Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2016, pp. 183–204.
Phiddian, Robert, editor. Publics for the Humanities? Special issue of University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 4, 2016.
Robbins, Bruce. “Presentism, Pastism, Professionalism.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 27, no. 2, 1999, pp. 457–63.
Salkeld, Duncan. “Shakespeare Studies, Presentism, and Micro-history.” Cahiers Élisabéthains, vol. 76, no. 1, 2009, pp. 35–43.
Schroeder, Robyn. “What Is Public Humanities?” Day of Public Humanities, Apr. 2017, dayofph.wordpress.com/what-is-public-humanities/.
Sedinger, Tracey. “Theory Terminable and Interminable: On Presentism, Historicism, and the Problem of Hamlet.” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, Fall 2007, pp. 455–73.
Stevens, Paul. “The New Presentism and Its Discontents: Listening to Eastward Ho and Shakespeare’s Tempest in Dialogue.” Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton, edited by Ann Baynes Coiro and Thomas Fulton, Cambridge UP, 2012, pp. 133–58.
Streete, Adrian. “The Politics of Ethical Presentism: Appropriation, Spirituality, and the Case of Antony and Cleopatra.” Textual Practice, vol. 22, no. 3, 2008, pp. 405–31.
Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture. Chatto & Windus, 1943.
———. Shakespeare’s History Plays. Chatto & Windus, 1944.
von Ranke, Leopold. History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations 1494–1514. Translated by P. A. Ashworth, Bohn’s Standard Library, 1909.
Wells, Robin Headlam. “‘Historicism’ and ‘Presentism’ in Early Modern Studies.” The Cambridge Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1, 2000, pp. 37–60.
Chapter Six
The Public Shakespeare Network
Veletsianos, George. Social Media in Academia: Networked Scholars. Routledge, 2016.