Mejia LaPerle, Carol. "Shakespeare's tragedies and the construction of difference." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/shakespeares-tragedies-and-the-construction-of-difference. [Date accessed].

Shakespeare's tragedies and the construction of difference

Three framing questions to analyze early modern racialization

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Carol Mejia LaPerle
Wright State University

Carol Mejia LaPerle offers three interpretive questions to introduce the ways early modern frameworks scaffold modes of racialization:

  • Who is friend and foe?
  • Whose power is legitimate?
  • Whose suffering matters?

By looking at Shakespeare's tragedies through these questions, students learn how early modern texts embed and develop structures of race and racial difference. These questions do more than reveal how early modern representations of evil, of legitimacy, and of suffering evoke racial difference. They invite us to dismantle the racializing logics that have perpetuated over long periods of time.

Further learning

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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

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Syllabus

Revising the Shakespeare survey

Ruben Espinosa's annotated syllabus offers entry points to broaching conversations about race and racism within a course that isn’t necessarily devoted to Shakespeare and critical race studies.

Ruben Espinosa

Selected annotated bibliography