Shakespeare and Antiblack World-Making

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.