Coley, Suzanne. "Shakespeare and the art of bookmaking." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/shakespeare-and-the-art-of-book-making.

Shakespeare and the art of bookmaking

Interpreting Shakespeare’s sonnets through a contemporary lens of bookmaking, embroidery, and printmaking.

Download the transcript
Suzanne Coley
Independent artist

As a book artist specializing in printmaking, poetry, embroidery, and bookbinding, Suzanne Coley reimagines the words of Shakespeare through the medium of book art. Her work brings Shakespeare into the contemporary world and reshapes his texts into culturally and socially significant art objects. In the last 10 years she has made over 500 unique traditional hardback books expanding the traditional bookbinding and book arts practices. Suzanne's art combines painting, poetry, printmaking, and textile manipulation to examine the human condition and modern-day social justice issues.

Further learning

Recommended

RaceB4Race Highlight

PCRS and appropriation studies

Vanessa I. Corredera explores ways of productively understanding racial representations in premodern critical race studies and in adaptations.

Vanessa I. Corredera
Activity

Student approaches to adaptations of Shakespeare

In this assignment, Ruben Espinosa asks students to write and record short videos using Shakespeare to highlight and interrogate contemporary social justice issues.

Ruben Espinosa
Video

Empire and gender in Titus Andronius

Titus Andronicus exposes how empire shapes gender. Tamora’s vilified fertility contrasts Lavinia’s enforced silence, revealing how both motherhood and chastity are distorted within imperial power and revenge.

Ayanna Thompson