James Shapiro, Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature specializing in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period, has been named a 2023–24 Berlin Prize fellow.
Shapiro is among 26 U.S.-based recipients that the American Academy in Berlin has selected as representing the highest standards of excellence in their fields, from the humanities and social sciences to journalism, public policy, fiction, the visual arts, and music composition. The prize provides recipients the time and resources to advance important scholarly and artistic projects, while also creating opportunities for community engagement through lectures, readings and performances.
While in Berlin, Shapiro will be completing Playbook: The Creation and Demise of a Theater for All Americans (under contract with Penguin and Faber). The book explores the rise and fall of the Federal Theatre, whose productions were seen by thirty million Americans from its creation in 1935 until 1939, when the first House un-American Committee targeted its plays as “un-American,” leading to its defunding—an early salvo in the country’s culture wars.
For more information about the fellowship, click here.
