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): 345-380.

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

RaceB4Race Highlight

Figurative speech and racecraft

Debapriya Sarkar explores the connections between English-language figurative speech and racecraft through an examination of George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (c. 1589) and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.

Debapriya Sarkar
Essay

Henry V and belonging

Shakespeare's language and status in the Western canon can feel inhospitable to many students, especially students of color. Teaching Henry V with a focus on linguistic identity, legitimacy, and belonging can open conversations that allow students to carve out a Shakespeare for themselves.

Ruben Espinosa
Video

[Re]constructing disciplines

What do we mean when we talk about classics or the classical? Dan-el Padilla Peralta deconstructs the history of the field of classics and its investment in hegemony, and how it carries with it an assignment of value.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta