Smith, Ian. "Reading race in Shakespeare." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/reading-race-in-shakespeare. [Date accessed].

Reading race in Shakespeare

Further reading into the "cliché of race."

Download the transcript
Ian Smith
University of Southern California

Barthelemy, Anthony Gerard. Black Face, Maligned Race: The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.

Little, Arthur, Jr. “Is it Possible to Read Shakespeare through Critical White Studies?” In Ayanna Thompson, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020: 268-80.

Marcus, Stephen and Sharon Best. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations 108.1 (2009): 1-21.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Schreiner, Susan E. “Appearances and Reality in Luther, Montaigne, and Shakespeare.” The Journal of Religion 83.3 (2003): 345-80.

Download the reading list

Further learning

Video

The cliché of race

Probing the cliché of race is a necessary moral objective and pedagogic requirement that begins by making race visible in Shakespeare’s texts to disrupt the prevalence of a destructive, convenient untruth.

Ian Smith
Essay

Racialized skin in Shakespeare

The necessity of excavating and exposing the forms of whiteness that both drive the cliché of race and offer students opportunities for more sharply defined social critique and self-interrogation.

Ian Smith

Recommended

Essay

Teaching race in Titus Andronicus

Helping students make sense of race in Titus Andronicus with a strategic framework for in-class discussion.

Ayanna Thompson
Activity

One word essay

This assignment in Kim F. Hall's Shakespeare courses asks students to analyze a single word in early modern texts using a variety of primary sources.

Kim F. Hall
Video

Hospitality in The Winter’s Tale

If we allow Shakespeare to remain inaccessible or inhospitable, then we reinforce the idea that he is white property. What can our students, especially our students of color, bring to a play like The Winter’s Tale?  

Ruben Espinosa