2017-2018 Faculty Research Grants
Monique Pittman (English)
Shakespeare’s Contested Nations: Anglo-American Performance of the History Plays in the Third Millennium
The performance record of William Shakespeare’s history plays—on stage, film, and television—reveals the way in which nationhood manifests through the telling of history. That performance record also exposes the painful and exclusionary consequences that have accrued from such totalizing narratives. Building on my 2011 publication of Authorizing Shakespeare and a number of articles published since that time, I will be utilizing sabbatical release time (Spring and Summer 2018) to draft a second monograph, this one examining Shakespeare’s history plays and nationhood in Anglo-American adaptation between 2001 and 2016—beginning with the world after 9/11 and concluding in the year of Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary death celebrations, Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump. I propose to explore how the history plays of Shakespeare, as performed in the third millennium, intersect with the themes of multiculturalism, globalization, new nationalism, and ethical obligation. To do so, I will be examining treatments of the plays in a range of styles and approaches: from staged performances in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and New York, to BBC prestige projects such as the “faithful” adaptations of the two Hollow Crown series, to heritage-style adaptations of the Wolf Hall variety, to contemporary American reinterpretations of the history play canon such as HBO’s The Wire and Netflix’s House of Cards. These studies of nationalism filtered through the telling and re-telling of history participate in my ongoing scholarship exploring the ethical responsibilities of art to comment upon, critique, and/or correct the unjust histories and institutional structures that beset and bedevil flourishing human relationships.