The partition of British India into two sovereign independent nations of India and Pakistan in 1947 was one of the most defining moments of the socio-political course of the sub-continent. The fight for independence from colonial rule and the rise of nationalism rooted in the religious discourse of two prominent religious communities- Hindus and…[Read more]

The partition of British India into two sovereign independent nations of India and Pakistan in 1947 was one of the most defining moments of the socio-political course of the sub-continent. The fight for independence from colonial rule and the rise of nationalism rooted in the religious discourse of two prominent religious communities- Hindus and…[Read more]

Despite a lack of a traditional cinema culture, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has recently witnessed an increase in film production. This rise can be attributed to a number of factors, not least of which, is the opening of movie theaters, the establishment of international film festivals and the arrival of film companies. These ventures have…[Read more]

Like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Shakespeare’s Sonnets challenge the binaries between gender and between the vernacular and the literary. Translators take up this challenge and turn it into an opportunity for humanist interpretations of literature, as in the case of Taiwanese essayist Liang Shiqiu’s (1903–1987) translation. Widely known in the Sin…[Read more]

This chapter argues that cultural appropriation can be an exploitative act but need not be; it all depends on what users do with Shakespeare. Due to the unequal status of the parties engaged in appropriative exchange, some appropriations deploy Shakespeare to protect conventional power structures. Appropriations are rarely negotiated on a level…[Read more]

Collaborative learning as a pedagogical method effectively reflects the communal character of the performing arts. By creating knowledge about Shakespearean performance collaboratively, students and educators lay claim to the ethics and ownership of that knowledge, an act that is particularly urgent and meaningful in the age of COVID-19 when we…[Read more]

Literary translations work with, rather than out of, the space between languages. Translations evolve not only across linguistic and cultural borders but also across time. It is notable that Shakespeare’s own play texts feature translational properties that can be amplified in translation. This translingual property makes Shakespeare’s text inh…[Read more]

This chapter presents a discussion of a literary genre called puthis, a premodern tradition of religious stories and plays in what is now Bangladesh, as an example of vernacular cosmopolitanism in an Asian context. The language of this genre, called Dubasha, is a “mixed language mode” (Seely 2008) characterized by the replacement of Sanskrit voc…[Read more]

Humor has always been important in Chinese drama. The four major role-types in traditional Chinese drama include the chou (usually translated as “clown”), the others being male roles, female roles, and “painted face” roles. Although placed last in the four-tier hierarchy, the humble clown with his comical facial makeup and humorous speech is an i…[Read more]

Text of a talk delivered remotely to Seshadripuram Evening Degree College to commemorate their Golden Jubilee in July 2022. Not peer-reviewed. Discusses, in memoiristic fashion, Tripthi Pillai’s coinage “Shakespeare Damage” — the initial encounter of many minoritized or colonized subjects (including LGBTQ+ persons) with Shakespeare– and…[Read more]

The metatheatricality of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has invited recent directors to tell particular kinds of socially progressive stories. This article uses the notion of “social reparation” to theorize remedial uses of Shakespeare in adaptations that give artists and audiences more moral agency. By imagining more inclusive local habitations and s…[Read more]

Based in the South throughout his career, the Black Baptist minister Sutton E. Griggs wrote nearly fifty books and pamphlets, including five novels, nearly all of which he issued through his own publishing companies. Griggs was a founder of American Baptist Theological Seminary, which several Civil Rights Movement leaders attended in the 1950s.…[Read more]