Smith, Ian. "Reading race in Shakespeare." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/reading-race-in-shakespeare. [Date accessed].

Reading race in Shakespeare

Further reading into the "cliché of race."

Download the transcript
Ian Smith
University of Southern California

Barthelemy, Anthony Gerard. Black Face, Maligned Race: The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.

Little, Arthur, Jr. “Is it Possible to Read Shakespeare through Critical White Studies?” In Ayanna Thompson, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020: 268-80.

Marcus, Stephen and Sharon Best. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations 108.1 (2009): 1-21.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Schreiner, Susan E. “Appearances and Reality in Luther, Montaigne, and Shakespeare.” The Journal of Religion 83.3 (2003): 345-80.

Download the reading list

Further learning

Video

The cliché of race

Probing the cliché of race is a necessary moral objective and pedagogic requirement that begins by making race visible in Shakespeare’s texts to disrupt the prevalence of a destructive, convenient untruth.

Ian Smith
Essay

Racialized skin in Shakespeare

The necessity of excavating and exposing the forms of whiteness that both drive the cliché of race and offer students opportunities for more sharply defined social critique and self-interrogation.

Ian Smith

Recommended

Video

The smells of The Tempest

How does the attribution of malodorousness in The Tempest reflect the kind of judgements underpinning prejudice—the judgement that decides who does, and who does not, belong?

Carol Mejia LaPerle
Syllabus

Race in the premodern world

In this class, Mayte Green-Mercado guides students through premodern origins of the construction of race and the consequences it carries today.

Mayte Green-Mercado
Video

Witnessing whiteness in the early modern world

It is crucial to scrutinize whiteness when exploring early modern constructions of social difference with students. Students are not often taught to see issues of white privilege and power.

Kim F. Hall

Selected annotated bibliography