In the context of media hostility and panic, what are the challenges faced by new scholars, audiences and learners?

How should Shakespeare be positioned in the twenty-first century cultural landscape?

Following the success of WOKE SHAKESPEARE: Rethinking Shakespeare for a New Era ... this * new * edited volume aims to explore some of the most recent conversations about teaching and performing Shakespeare in the age of woke cultural politics, culture wars, and social justice debates.

Contributors are invited to consider:

• Appropriation and adaptation studies
• New digital media
• Local, global, glocal Shakespeares
• Casting controversies
• Eco-criticism
• Shakespeare and the politics of woke-phobic panic
• Reconsidering character, identity and human agency
• Constructing/Challenging a social justice pedagogy
• Reframing contemporary Shakespearean poetics
• Shakespeare and the politics of gender
• Trigger warnings: censorship, safety, and emancipation
• Race and racism revisited
• Audience diversity, equity and inclusion strategies
• Fan studies and fandom
• Postcolonial Shakespeare
• Woke women: feminism and misogyny
• Debating accessibility and audience incomprehension
• The opportunities and challenges of film and other media adaptations
• Activist Shakespeare and social justice
• Queer temporalities
• Woke performance: opportunities and challenges
• Shakespeare in the age of social media and enhanced interactivity
• In and Out of Context: Shakespeare, tradition and the contested cultural heritage
• Decolonizing the curriculum
• Class Agenda? Radicals and reactionaries on stage/in the classroom

Contributors are asked to provide an Abstract of their proposed contribution (300 words) and a short Author bio (150 words) by 30 June 2025.

Aiming for high accessibility, the published collection will be available at an affordable price in various print and other formats in order to reach the widest possible global readership.