“Shakespeare and the Consumption of Culture”
Shakespeare’s plays and the critical conversations around them are deeply concerned with questions of culture. Many of the plays are set in cultures different than Shakespeare’s own early modern England, from Denmark to Italy to Ancient Rome, often using those cultures to examine his own. Productions of his plays have been set in a dizzying array of cultures, in order make comments on yet other cultures. The culture of Imperial Britain made use of Shakespeare in order to dominate (and often consume) the cultures which they colonized.
Following the theme of this year’s conference, “Consuming Cultures,” this permanent session invites papers which consider questions of cultural difference, contact, or conflict within Shakespeare’s plays, productions of the plays, or within Shakespearean criticism.
Please submit an abstract of 250 words to rgilbert1@luc.edu by April 5, 2018