Reanimating Shakespeare’s Othello in Post-Racial America

Vanessa I. Corredera is Associate Professor in and Chair of the Department of English at Andrews University. Her scholarship focuses on the intersections between Shakespeare, race and representation in contemporary popular culture, adaptations/appropriations and performance. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and collections, including Literature Compass, Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, and Shakespeare Quarterly. Along with L. Monique Pittman and Geoffrey Way, she is co-editing the forthcoming collection Rethinking Shakespeare and Appropriation for the Twenty-First Century.

• IntroductionReanimating Othello in Post-racial America Post-racial and Colourblind The Post-racial and the Colourblind in Cultural Works Shakespeare and America’s Racecraft Chapter Overviews Conclusion: Shakespeare, Race, and Habitus Chapter 1. Images of Objectification: Othello as Prop in Kill ShakespeareDepicting Othello: Visual and Ideological Distortions Controlling Images and the Stereotyping of Black Men Representing Blackness in Comic Book History Kill Shakespeare’s Othello and the Complexities of the Black Superhero Othello: The White Protagonists’ Foil On the Story’s Margins: Othello’s Narrative Limitations Othello as Prop Conclusion: Audience, Othello, and the Limits of Re-presentation Chapter 2. Colourblindness on the Post-racial Stage: Hip Hop, Comedy, and Cultural Appropriation in Othello the Remix ‘I know what you’re thinkin’" Hip Hop, Shakespeare, and Audience Expectations Reconsidering Colourblind Shakespeare Cultural Appropriation, Colourblindness, and Hip-Hop History Racial Erasure: Othello: The Remix and the Flattening of Racial Identity Comedy and Colourblindness ‘But there’s comedy in it’: Comedy as Racial Balm Racial Stereotypes and their Aftereffects Colourblindness and Cultural Appropriation Revisited Othello: The Remix, a Post-Racial Product Chapter 3. Othello, Race, and Serial: The Ethics of a Shakespearean Cameo The White Racial Frame Othello Makes a Cameo Devaluing the Racial Other: Koenig and the White Racial Frame Narrative Authority and the Centering of Whiteness: Koenig as Serial’s Iago The Stranger from ‘over there’: Constructions of Race in Serial Shakespearean Implications: Reconsidering Premodern Critical Race Studies Chapter 4. ‘no tools with which to hear’: Adaptive Re-vision, Audience Education, and American Moor Whiteness and the American Theatre American Moor and Racism Across (Crumpled) Time Black Masculinity and Misrepresentation American Moor and Education Theater and Adaptive Re-vision The Hope of Audience Education Conclusion: The Time for Theatre’s Reckoning Chapter 5. At the Intersection of gender, Race, and White Privilege: A Case of Three Desdemona Plays Desdemona Plays and Feminism Intersectionality and Feminist Racial Erasure Desdemona’s Imperfection: Confronting Class and White Privilege Desdemona and Othello: Competing Forms of Oppression Epilogue: The Accessibility Problem Chapter 6. Resisting Lobotomized Shakespeare: Whiteness and Universality in Key & Peele and Get Out The Allure of Universal Shakespeare Whiteness, Narratives, and the Universal ‘We’ ‘How dey goin to kill Othello?!’: Questioning Shakespearean Universality ‘I told you not to go in…’:Horror and the Framing of Blackness in Get Out and Othello Get Out and the Necropolitics of White Supremacy A New Perspective: Reconsidering Othello via Get Out Microagressions and Black Paranoia Conclusion: Othello and the Sunken Place Epilogue Bibliography

Brilliant, stunning and illuminating, Reanimating Shakespeare’s Othello in Post-Racial America provides vital interventions in Shakespeare studies and adaptation studies. Corredera’s argumentation and prose are clear, compelling and very convincing. You will never read or see Othello in the same way again. A must read for all scholars and students of Shakespeare!