Todd Barnes's Shakespearean Charity and the Perils of Redemptive Performance Wins Accolades

Congratulations to Todd Barnes (Literature), whose recent book, Shakespearean Charity and the Perils of Redemptive Performance (Cambridge, 2020) was included as one of ten works included in their “This Year’s Contribution to Shakespeare Studies,” published by the Shakespeare Survey.

The author of the year’s review, Jane Kingsley-Smith, notes that the book, “which examines the phenomenon of the TV-documentary-about-underprivileged-students-being-transformed-by-their-experience-of-Shakespeare. . . resonates with much larger questions. When we as Shakespeare scholars, teachers, readers, and theatregoers, think about Shakespeare as being ‘good for you,’ for whom do we mean exactly? What does it mean to give Shakespeare as a ‘gift’ to students and what do we expect in return?. . . Barnes’s central argument is that embracing a transcendental Shakespeare allows these films to erase cultural and racial differences. ‘Shakespeare’ serves to deflect attention away from the social injustices that create difference, on the individual’s responsibility to ‘redeem’ themselves.

Categories: Faculty News