News
Dustin Stewart and Hannah Weaver have been awarded Heyman Center Fellowships for 2021-22
At its October meeting, the MLA Executive Council appointed Brent Hayes Edwards, Peng Family Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, to serve as the next editor of PMLA.
James Shapiro wrote in The Guardian about "Swingin’ the Dream," 1939's "lost Shakespeare jazz musical," and the modern livestreamed performance based on the show’s surviving music.
Andrew Delbanco discussed education - and, in particular, the humanities - as "the only force that can save democracy" in an article in Inside Higher Ed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/books/review/best-books.html
In his latest book, the author of “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?” and “1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare” has outdone himself. He takes two huge cultural hyper-objects — Shakespeare and America — and dissects the effects of their collision. Each chapter centers on a year with a different thematic focus. The first chapter, “1833: Miscegenation,” revolves around John Quincy Adams and his obsessive hatred of Desdemona. The last chapter, “2017: Left | Right,” where Shapiro truly soars, analyzes the notorious Central Park production of “Julius Caesar.” By this point it is clear that the real subject of the book is not Shakespeare plays, but us, the U.S.
Nonfiction | Penguin Press. $27. | Read the review
Professor Jack Halberstam provides another way of looking at queerness and queer bodies in a new book.