"Othello Was My Grandfather": Shakespeare and Race in the African Diaspora

FAIN: FT-248888-16

Kim Felicia Hall
Barnard College (New York, NY 10027-6909)

Research for a book on the relationship between William Shakespeare's play Othello and African American culture, 19th century to the present.

This book project uses versions of Shakespeare’s Othello to connect Shakespeare and freedom dreams in the African Diaspora. It examines stage, print, transnational and digital "performances" of Othello from the 19th century until today to discuss several linked phenomena: the role of Shakespeare in constructions of blackness and race; discussions of race and genealogy in Afrodiasporic thought; the appropriation of Shakespeare by black communities; the policing of canonical literature along racial lines; and the race/gender politics of the American stage and popular media. Othello the play and its performance history become a space through which black writers explore issues of racial belonging, interracial relationships, gender, migration and power.