This program explores Shakespeare’s radical influence across time and place. We’ll trace how his language and political vision helped inspire the rhetoric of the American Revolution, even echoing in the Declaration of Independence. We’ll consider the historical forces that transformed Shakespeare into a cultural authority whose work could be enlisted for causes of liberation, often speaking to those on the margins of power. And we’ll look far beyond the eighteenth century to moments when Shakespeare became a clandestine ally, such as his use by the French Resistance during World War II to carry coded messages of defiance.
Christine Hamel is an actor, voice coach, director, and scholar whose work focuses on the politics of voice, emotion, and embodiment.
Erika Boeckeler is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University.
Adele Lee is author of The English Renaissance and the Far East: Cross-Cultural Encounters (2017), editor of Shakespeare and Accentism (2020), and co-author (with Sarah Olive et.al.) of Shakespeare in East Asian Education (2021).
Carla Della Gatta is a theatre historian and performance theorist whose research focuses on ethnicity and aurality, specifically Shakespearean adaptation and performance, bilingual theatre, and theatre archives. Her primary fields are Shakespeare, Latinx theatre, LGBTQ theatre, and critical theory. She is Head of the MA/PhD program and Associate Professor of Theatre Scholarship and Performance Studies at University of Maryland.
