"No other but a woman's reason"

The volume revisions Shakespeare studies from an international, mainly feminist or gender, perspective. It sheds a new light on Shakespeare through the work of women from all over the world: actresses, directors, writers and others, who appropriated Shakespeare according to their specific social and cultural milieu and political situations.

«This collection of essays provides new perspectives on reading, reinterpreting, appropriating and popularising Shakespeare through the work of women actresses, directors, designers, translators and scholars from different cultural, social and political, mostly non-English speaking, contexts. Raising a wide variety of urgent issues relating not only to Shakespeare but also to the arts, to gender matters, and to postcolonial and ethnic studies, this volume advocates both the illumination of the often neglected, forgotten and rarely appreciated women who deserve the spotlight of attention on an international level and the need for revisions in Shakespearean studies, which are dominated by cultural sameness of prevalently male professionals.» (Prof. Dr. habil. Boenna Chyliska, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw)

Autorentext

Krystyna Kujawinska-Courtney is Associate Professor at the University of Lodz (Poland). Her research interests are literary theory, especially gender and New Historicist studies. She has published on the global cultural authority of Shakespeare's plays in relation to theatre and early modern and modern culture. Izabella Penier has a PhD in American literature. She works on African American and Caribbean literature, ethnic and postcolonial scholarship, mainly on critical interventions into Black studies from global frameworks of analysis such as postcolonialism, cultural and diaspora studies. Katarzyna Kwapisz-Williams has a PhD in English studies. Her research interests include literary theory and digital humanities, utopian literature, diasporic literature, and Renaissance studies. She also works on migrant narratives and cultural memory and imaginaries.

Inhalt
Contents: Kathryn Prince: «True Originall Copies»: Charlotte Lennox's Shakespear Illustrated, Originality, Invention, and Eighteenth-Century Shakespeare Reception Catherine M.S. Alexander: Shakespeare and the Unsexed Females Anna Cetera: Woman, Thy Name is Embarrassment! The Princess and the Playwright Nita N. Kumar: «Shakespeare Is a Black Woman»: African American Women Writers and Shakespeare Giovanna Buonanno: Shakespeare and the Nineteenth-century Italian International Actress: Adelaide Ristori as Lady Macbeth Krystyna Kujawiska Courtney: «Born outside the Magic Pale of the Anglo-Saxon Race»: Political and Personal Dimension of Helena Modjeska's Contribution to Shakespeare Studies Yoshiko Kawachi: Madame Sadayakko: The First Shakespearean Actress in Japan - On Her Contribution toward Modernizing the Stage Rosemary Gaby: Taking Shakespeare to the Edge of the World: Leading Ladies on Tour in Colonial Australia Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay: «Women of Ill-fame» and Shakespeare Performance in Colonial Bengal Laurence Wright: «Most Fearful Hard Work»: Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Marda Vanne and the «Good Companions» in South Africa Donna Woodford-Gormley: The Woman behind the Mask: Cuban Women and Shakespeare Anna Kamaralli: Revisionism or Fresh Vision? Silence, Speech and the Female Director Xenia Georgopoulou: Shakespeare's Magic Mirror: The Work of Raia Mouzenidou Julie Sutherland: «Never Conquered nor Possessed»: Shakespeare in Native Canada and Québec in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries Margarida Gandara Rauen: On Shakespeare by Brazilian Women.