This book is about Shakespeare's role in sustaining the antiblack paradigm of modernity. This work re-reads both Shakespearean texts and performances from the 16th century to the present to argue that American and English societies have deployed Shakespeare for four hundred years as a mechanism to construct and reinforce paradigmatic antiblackness. Framed within the author's experiences as a Black scholar, actor, and director of Shakespeare and using both contemporary Critical Race Theory (CRT), as well as Pre-Modern Critical Race Studies (PCRS), this book uses civil society's engagement with and performance of Shakespeare in various times and places to reveal the continuum of antiblackness that predates chattel slavery in America and contributes to antiblack world-making across oceans and centuries.
This book is about Shakespeare's role in sustaining the anti-Black paradigm of modernity. This work re-reads both Shakespearean texts and performances from the 16th century to the present to argue that American and English societies have deployed Shakespeare for four hundred years as a mechanism to construct and reinforce paradigmatic anti-Blackness. Framed within the author's experiences as a Black scholar, actor, and director of Shakespeare and using both contemporary Critical Race Theory (CRT), as well as Pre-Modern Critical Race Studies (PCRS), this book uses civil society's engagement with and performance of Shakespeare in various times and places to reveal the continuum of anti-Blackness that predates chattel slavery in America and contributes to anti-Black world-making across oceans and centuries.
Matthieu Chapman is an Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz and the Literary Director of NY Classical Theatre, USA. His memoir, Shattered: Fragments of a Black Life is available from WVU Press (2023). His first monograph, Antiblack Racism in Early Modern English Drama: The Other "Other" was published in 2017. He is the co-editor along with Anna Wainwright of Teaching Race in the Early Modern World: A Classroom Guide (2023). Matthieu has also published articles in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Theatre Topics, Shakespeare, Literature Compass, TheatreForum, Theatre History Studies, Early Theatre, and others. His creative writing and essays have been featured in Pithead Chapel, Prose Online, Beyond Words, Revolute, and the Huffington Post.
