Shakespeare

In Shakespeare: New Voices a diverse range of contributors were asked to rethink, reframe, and recontextualize Shakespeare’s drama in relation to contemporary debates across the academy and public discourse. Accordingly, this new collection presents a variety of new voices emerging out of contemporary Shakespeare and performance studies in the wider context of a global age of culture wars, identity politics, digital transformation, and pedagogic innovation.
Shakespeare: New Voices is a bold and necessary collection for our times. It not only examines Shakespeare’s place in twenty-first-century culture but also interrogates the role that literature, performance, and theory can play in social justice movements, intensifying culture wars, and emancipatory pedagogy.

In an era marked by global unrest, heightened attention to social justice, and a backlash against ‘wokeness’, Shakespeare’s drama persists as a cultural cornerstone and serves as point of common reference; the plays create a forum for debate and contestation, and opportunities for creative appropriation and adaptation. At one extreme, we find the Shakespeare Idol (Bardolatry); at the other the critique of transcendence and universalist claims, and a more nuanced exploration of forms of inclusion and exclusion within global Shakespeare studies.

With accessibility, originality, and meticulous scholarship as key guiding principles, this volume provides a pluralistic account of Shakespeare’s place in contemporary social and cultural life.