“‘Not a Moor Exactly’: Shakespeare, Serial, and Modern Constructions of Race.”

Corredera, Vanessa. “‘Not a Moor Exactly’: Shakespeare, Serial, and Modern Constructions of Race.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 1, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 30–50, http://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2016.0009. Accessed 21 July 2021.

Corredera argues that when teaching Shakespeare’s plays, specifically Othello, educators should use the term race when discussing early modern conceptions of Otherness. Although scientific understanding of race did not emerge until the 17th century, Elizabethans established Otherness through markers such as religion, skin color, locale, and exoticism. Corredera cites the work of other early modern scholars who agree that constructions of race today are no more stable than they were during the Renaissance, and not necessarily grounded in biology: factors such as language, culture, religion, appearance, and ethnicity still influence contemporary ideas of race (Corredera 30-32). To illustrate, Corredera points to the podcast Serial: This American Crime, which followed the trial of Pakistani American teenager Adnan Syed, convicted of murdering his Korean girlfriend. Journalist and host Sarah Koenig confused religion with race when she said authorities were not motivated by “anti-Muslim feeling, by racism” (Corredera 38). Jury members struggled to define Syed’s Otherness, mistakenly referring to his “Arabic” culture (Pakistanis are not Arabs), and associating him with stereotypes of “how they treat their women” “over there” – even though defendant and jurors all lived in Baltimore, sharing the same culture (Corredera 39-40). Even for informed and educated people, facets of identity outside of biology such as religion and ethnicity still inform conceptions of the Other, making it vital to recognize race in Shakespeare’s works (Corredera 41-45).

--Jess Fraser

“Authentic Protest, Authentic Shakespeare, Authentic Africans: Performing Othello in South Africa”

Distiller, Natasha. “Authentic Protest, Authentic Shakespeare, Authentic Africans: Performing Othello in South Africa.” Comparative Drama, vol. 46, no. 3, 2012, pp. 339-354. Project Muse, doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2012.0023.

In this essay, Natasha Distiller considers whether Othello is a racist play, considering it was written by a white man and intended for a white actor in blackface to play the part of the black character. She develops this consideration through a look at Janet Suzman’s 1987 production of Othello in apartheid South Africa, which served as a “protest play” for South African policies surrounding race. Ultimately, Distiller argues that Shakespeare’s work isn’t racist, but rather a powerful tool that can provide meaning to a given cultural context. She says that Othello will mean different things to different people depending on the cultural context of the play’s presentation, including the time and place it is staged in. She begins by discussing the comments of Shakespeare critic James Earl Jones, who said that Othello shouldn’t be looked at from a perspective of race, but should instead be explored as a “classic” piece of literature with universal themes that do not include race. However, Distiller argues that black actors cannot ignore their black identity while playing the part of Othello, making it impossible to not make Othello about race, for how can one expect a black actor to play this role as a black man in a white world without being aware of his own blackness? Distiller then discusses how Suzman, in her 1987 production of Othello as a protest play in apartheid South Africa, has deliberately placed Othello into a singular time and place. Instead of centering on the universal themes of the “classics,” she encourages the audience to consider both race and gender issues present in the play, creating a direct link between what is happening in the play and what is happening in South Africa. 

Jenny Jadin

“We Are Othello: Speaking of Race in Early Modern Studies.”

 Smith, Ian. “We Are Othello: Speaking of Race in Early Modern Studies.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 1, 2016, pp. 104-124. Project MUSE, doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2016.0000.

     Ian Smith considers the implications that race relations in Othello can have on contemporary racial conflicts in the U.S., such as police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. Ultimately, he uses the racial conflicts present in Othello to argue that predominantly white culture, specifically scholars, need to do the internal work necessary in order to 1) fully understand the perspective and unique experience of a person of color and 2) discuss race without a biased lens of white privilege. Smith begins by questioning the reliability of white scholars in accurately representing Othello in their analyses, considering that Othello is a black man and literary scholars are predominately white. Smith says that with primarily white critics, Othello might not get the credit he deserves because white audiences/readers/critics are “unreliable narrators” of Othello’s story (113). Smith then explores how white privilege in the U.S. is mirrored in Othello, pointing toward Othello needing to answer for his skin color when questioned on Desdemona’s love for him, and toward Othello needing to ask his comrades to “speak of” him at the end of the play. Othello must trust that his comrades will accurately reflect his story without their own biases. This is where Smith considers the notion of white privilege in the U.S. and challenges readers and scholars to do the work necessary to develop a reliable representation of Othello’s experience--and of the experience of people of color in general. While it is easy for people who are white to ignore race because they are not confronted with their race on a daily basis, doing so perpetuates white privilege. In order to “speak of” Othello (and by extension, people of color) reliably, we must do the work that allows us to fully understand Othello’s experience; we must align with the sentiment expressed in the article’s title: “We Are Othello.”

Jenny Jadin

“You Be Othello: Interrogating Identification in the Classroom.”

 DeGravelles, Karin H. “You Be Othello: Interrogating Identification in the Classroom.”

Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, vol. 11, no. 1, 2011, pp. 153-175. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1215/15314200-2010- 021. Accessed 7 July 2021. 

In “You Be Othello: Interrogating Identification in the Classroom,” Karin DeGravelles argues that in teaching Othello, it is our responsibility, as teachers and readers, to engage with the play in a way that focuses attention on those “who have been harmed,” as opposed to the traditional literary elements (172). She says that in doing so, we can inspect the play with a focus on historical trauma. Through her investigation, DeGravelles addresses the multiple “permeable” lines that separate areas such as “fiction and reality, past and present, or the world of students and the world of Shakespeare’s text” (153). DeGravelles dives into these permeable lines through five different discussion points that lead to her claim. First, she argues against mere teaching of identification because it is influenced heavily by “performance choices, including the choice to perform at all” (158). For example, how an actor plays a part or even what they look like can affect an audience’s ability to identify with that character and will change with each performance. Further, an actor’s role or identification shapes the performance of the play, as DeGravelles cites an example of an actor who so identified with Othello and became him on stage that he scared the actress playing Desdemona (159). These discussions then transition into the pedagogical practices, including a push for performance techniques that “reveal much about the play that purely textual approaches do not” (163). When students have the opportunities to read, perform, or act out scenes, they engage with the text in ways that having a teacher read aloud cannot reach. Finally, DeGravelles ends her discussion by reaching her claim through a discussion on race and pedagogy, admitting that many teachers avoid teaching Othello in the classroom because of its potentially sensitive nature, but that is the very reason it should be taught in the first place.

--Michelle Vucsko