The Global Shakespeare Project

Computer-based eLearning Units?

List of Individual Units

• Barzilai, Reut: "Being European: The Foreign History of Hamlet on the Israeli Stage"
For almost 60 years, from its first production in 1946 until its sixth production in 2005, Israeli theatres repeatedly invited Europeans to direct Hamlet and offered Israeli audiences locally-irrelevant productions of the play. They did so even though local productions of canonical plays in Israel tend to be more financially successful than those directed by non-Israelis, and even when local national and political circumstances bore a striking resemblance to the plot of the play.
Dr Barzilai’s talk explores the various functions that Hamlet has served for the Israeli theatre: a rite of passage, an educational tool, an indication of belonging to the European cultural tradition, a means of boosting the prestige of Israeli theatres (in their own and their audience’s eyes), and - only finally - a mirror reflecting Israel’s "very age and body."
• Chatterjee, Chandrani: "Global Shakespeare: A Translational Framework"
Chandrani Chatterjee's lecture attempts to discuss Shakespeare in translation in the Indian context. She suggests how the Shakespeare text in most cases affords a point of departure for a process of radical, highly selective reworking. This becomes further interesting when one acknowledges that Shakespeare's texts themselves were kinds of rewritings and appropriations of earlier sources – a translation of sorts, that calls for reinventing ways of telling stories that travel circuitous paths.
• Harris, Jonathan Gil: "Masala Shakespeare: The Politics of the More-than-One"
Shakespeare is Bollywood's most successful screenplay writer, with many Hindi-language versions of his plays – and countless more influenced by them – attracting large audiences. Hindi adaptations of Shakespeare show how masala is not just a style or genre. It embodies a certain idea of India that has a certain dissident potential in the current political moment, when the current government is insisting on the nation's Hinduism, renaming for example locations that have Muslim names such as Allahabad with Sanskrit names such as Prayagraj.
• König, Lotta: "Shall I compare thee ... to Norms of Sexuality? Reflecting on Heteronormativity when Teaching Shakespeare's Sonnets in School"
In her talk, Dr Lotta König gives an insight into questions of teaching Shakespeare. More specifically, she addresses the question how to raise a critical awareness of heteronormativity when working with Shakespeare's sonnets in school.
• Mngadi, Sikhumbuzo: "The Reception of Shakespeare in South Africa"
Prof Mngadi demonstrates that different Shakespeares appear in cultural productions and in Shakespeare scholarship in South Africa. Despite or maybe even because of a shift in view on early Shakespeare re-workings, Mngadi argues for South African scholarship to return attention to the early stages of re-adaptations in order to be able to grasp the global nature of Shakespeare for the South African stage.
• Rogers, Jami: "Casting Practices Leading to Discrimination in the Performing Arts in the UK"
Jami Rogers' lecture is about multicultural Shakespeare in Great Britain; or more precisely about the long road to the inclusion of non-white performers in the British Shakespeare theatre industry. The talk will show some of Rogers' findings on inequalities in British theatre based on the research she has been conducting over the past years.