Little, Jr., Arthur J. "(Mis)Appropriations, Shakespeare, Race, and the Police." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/shakespeare-and-the-police. [Date accessed].
Shakespeare and the police
Understanding the ways Shakespeare and early modern studies are policed in and out of the academy.
(Mis)Appropriations, Shakespeare, Race, and the Police | Watch the full video
Presented by Arthur L. Little, Jr. at Appropriations: A RaceB4Race Symposium in 2020
Arthur L. Little, Jr. addresses the ways Shakespeare and early modern studies are policed in and out of the academy. He reflects on “policing” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Adam P. Kennedy and Adrienne Kennedy’s Sleep Deprivation Chamber play, drawing parallels to the police brutality experienced by Rodney King on March 3, 1991, which was broadcast to the world. Little compares the policing of the Black body to the intellectual theft that often surrounds Shakespeare and early modern studies.
Further learning
Recommended
Othello and Barbary's blues
Justin P. Shaw is interested in how appropriation can mean theft as well as “making something new.” Using a framework of Black music and the history of appropriation of the Blues to shed light on Desdemona’s memory of Barbary’s song in Shakespeare's Othello, Shaw asks the question: where is the line between tribute and theft?
Slavery, sugar, and the value of Shakespeare
Emma Smith traces the linage of Richard Oswald's 18th-century library to reveal how so-called rare books became totems of class status. Oswald's library is an example of how enslavement of African people by the British is woven into the fabric of book history and how value is construced.
