Dadabhoy, Ambereen. "All Our Othellos: Shakespeare and the War on Terror." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/shakespeare-and-the-war-on-terror. [Date accessed].
Shakespeare and the War on Terror
Showing how teaching our existing narratives of European and English encounters with Islam might affirm stereotypes of what it means to be Muslim in lieu of destabilizing them.
All Our Othellos: Shakespeare and the War on Terror | Watch the full talk
Presented by Ambereen Dadabhoy at Education: A RaceB4Race Symposium in 2021
Ambereen Dadabhoy investigates the long history of the logics of the War on Terror and how these structure narratives about Muslims across the centuries. Here, she engages the question with reference to Shakespeare’s Othello, the portraiture of Velazquez (1599-1660), Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (2012), and contemporary discourses of white supremacy. Dadabhoy’s talk draws upon the connective tissue between these cultural fragments to show how teaching our existing narratives of European and English encounters with Islam might affirm stereotypes of what it means to be Muslim in lieu of destabilizing them.
Further learning
Recommended
Sexualization of Islam in Turk plays
“Turk plays” used race, religion, and sexuality to construct and enforce difference portraying Muslims, Jews, and Black people as sexually deviant or unnatural. Studying these texts reveals how early modern depictions of sexuality and race intersected.
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