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.

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Ambereen Dadabhoy
Harvey Mudd College

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.

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Syllabus

Othello and Othello and Othello

Beginning with the play’s earliest performance, we study Othello from various critical perspectives through close analysis of the play-text and adaptations on film and stage. For several weeks students read the text of the play slowly and closely, paying particular attention to Shakespeare’s use of language, metaphor, genre, and dramatic form.

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