Little, Jr., Arthur J. "(Mis)Appropriations, Shakespeare, Race, and the Police." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/shakespeare-and-the-police. [Date accessed].

Shakespeare and the police

Understanding the ways Shakespeare and early modern studies are policed in and out of the academy.

Download the transcript
Arthur L. Little, Jr.
University of California, Los Angeles

(Mis)Appropriations, Shakespeare, Race, and the Police | Watch the full video

Presented by Arthur L. Little, Jr. at Appropriations: A RaceB4Race Symposium in 2020

Arthur L. Little, Jr. addresses the ways Shakespeare and early modern studies are policed in and out of the academy. He reflects on “policing” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Adam P. Kennedy and Adrienne Kennedy’s Sleep Deprivation Chamber play, drawing parallels to the police brutality experienced by Rodney King on March 3, 1991, which was broadcast to the world. Little compares the policing of the Black body to the intellectual theft that often surrounds Shakespeare and early modern studies.

Further learning

Recommended

Reading list

Indigenous Shakespeares

Selected readings to contextualize Shakespeare and indigeneity in your classroom.

Madeline Sayet
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
Video

Othello and the epithet of "Moor"

Ambereen Dadabhoy uses Shakespeare’s Othello as a text through which students can think about contemporary Islamophobia.

Ambereen Dadabhoy

Selected annotated bibliography