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.

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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

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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.

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