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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until August 02, 2025

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Inclusive Shakespeare: An Intersectional Analysis of Contemporary Production

Brinkman, Eric M.
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9314-1459
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1595003420023716

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Theatre.
This study focuses on race, sexuality, and gender in relation to the reading and performance of Shakespearean drama. Taking an intersectional approach, I bring to bear a wide range of theoretical and critical approaches, including scholarship across the fields of affect and queer theory and critical race, performance, and transgender studies in order to explore contemporary failures to account for difference in the reading, editing, and performing of Shakespeare’s plays. In the first chapter I argue that the often-overlooked multiple dimensions of the affect generated by the performance of female actors, what I call affective complexity, in plays such as "Measure for Measure," "Titus Andronicus," and "Othello" is valuable and in fact frequently central to an audience’s reception of a play. In the second chapter I argue for a more inclusive view of sexuality in "Romeo and Juliet" through an interrogation of the editorial emendations in several contemporary editions, each of which assume heteronormative readings of the play that ignore its queer performance history. In my third chapter I argue that the underlying antiblack dialectic embedded in "Othello" necessitates its careful reading through the lens provided by critical race theory in order to understand the way the play frames itself as a conversation about the ontological status of Black humanity. The fourth chapter explores readings of "Hamlet" and "Twelfth Night" through the lens of transgender rage, a perspective that makes clear that the rage expressed by characters such as Shylock, Hamlet, and Malvolio are the result of the failure of their “disguises”: the denial of their characters to express their chosen gender presentation. Finally, the conclusion discusses the benefits and challenges of my own attempts as a director to experiment with nontraditional casting within performances of Shakespeare’s plays by exploring the potentiality within them for nonbinary and transgender presence.
Ana Puga (Advisor)
Shannon Winnubst (Committee Member)
Jennifer Higginbotham (Committee Member)
William Worthen (Committee Member)
247 p.
African American Studies; Black Studies; British and Irish Literature; Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Fine Arts; Gender Studies; History; Literature; Pedagogy; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies; Womens Studies
Shakespeare; affect; sexuality; gender; performance; Theatre; drama; queer theory; critical race theory; blackness; transgender theory; intersectional; pedagogy; Shakespeare plays; Hamlet; Titus Andronicus; Othello; Twelfth Night; Romeo and Juliet

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Brinkman, E. M. (2020). Inclusive Shakespeare: An Intersectional Analysis of Contemporary Production [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1595003420023716

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Brinkman, Eric. Inclusive Shakespeare: An Intersectional Analysis of Contemporary Production. 2020. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1595003420023716.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Brinkman, Eric. "Inclusive Shakespeare: An Intersectional Analysis of Contemporary Production." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1595003420023716

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1595003420023716
© 2020, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.