Shakespeare and race

Explore Throughlines, a free resource offering teaching materials to help educators integrate discussions of race into Shakespeare and other premodern texts in college classrooms.

James Shapiro explores the cultural and political impact of the New Deal theater program in The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War.

Can we love Shakespeare and be antiracist? Farah Karim-Cooper’s new book explores the language of race and difference in plays such as Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, and The Tempest.

Margo Hendricks joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about her research in pre-modern race studies and her romance and mystery novels.

Theater-maker and past Folger Fellow Debra Ann Byrd tells us about her solo show.

Ian Smith returns to Shakespeare Unlimited and talks with Barbara Bogaev about how we can develop our “racial literacy” and read race in plays like Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet.

Joyce Green MacDonald shares the history of four Black women Shakespeareans who took to the American stage from 1821 – 1960: The African Grove Theatre’s “Miss Welsh,” Henrietta Vinton Davis, Adrienne McNeil Herndon, and Jane White.

Dr. Patricia Akhimie and Dr. Carol Mejia LaPerle explore the ways that Shakespeare’s language—think descriptors like “fair,” “sooty,” and “alabaster”—constructs and enshrines systems of race and racism.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 168 When did the concept of race develop? How far should we look back to find the attitudes that bolster white supremacy? We ask Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy, an assistant professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College, and…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 155 In his classes at Binghamton University, David Sterling Brown and his students examine Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of Critical Race Theory. You might have heard about Critical Race Theory lately: put simply, it’s a way…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 35 Shakespeare and his plays are woven deeply into the culture of the Caribbean, both white and black. Even after centuries of British colonial rule came to an end, Shakespeare endured.  There’s a long tradition in the…

African American engagement with Shakespeare goes back a long way—maybe even farther than you’d imagine. And like so much else surrounding American race relations, African American performance of Shakespeare is inextricably linked to the experiences of…