This essay discusses female spectatorship from within Shakespeare’s plays as performed in his lifetime. Several plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet or King Lear address the issue of female spectatorship, providing comedic and tragic illustrations of how women reacted to theatrical performances, and how playwrights seemed to address the…[Read more]

One important but under-considered aspect of the connection between television’s rise and the Cold War is the anxiety that the rapid growth in the cultural influence of television produced in its wake, most notably a concern about the older, traditional American culture ostensibly being left behind. Included within this “traditional” culture was…[Read more]