#farah karim cooper

[odinsblog]

“Yeah, I mean, in 2018 was the first Shakespeare and race festival that I curated at the Globe. And at that time, there was less vitriol, but it was more like, why are we talking about Shakespeare and race? Shakespeare's got nothing to do with race.

So that led me to thinking about writing this book. But it was in 2020, when I launched the anti-racist Shakespeare webinars, that there was a horrible backlash, very racist backlash. And my own ethnic origins were brought into the conversation.

Oh, she's a woman of color. That's why she's talking about race. And actually, I had been at the Globe for 17 years by that point, you know?

And so that backlash is about ownership. It's about people feeling that something is being taken away from them.

And after the Black Lives movement, Black Lives Matter movement went global, and organizations like museums and galleries and theaters started to take it seriously, that's when you started to see a really racist backlash against any kind of progressive movement, whether it's in a theater or a museum. And I certainly had to face that in 2020.

I was a little bit worried about it, probably more so in the UK, because I think in the UK there's a special sense of ownership of Shakespeare in the way that there isn't in the US. So I'm American, but I'm also a Pakistani. And so I think it was really, it's a double whammy for the British.

Whereas in America, I feel like I was less worried because Americans don't mind other Americans talking about Shakespeare. So I was in the UK, concerned about that. But I think it obviously didn't stop me because what I'm trying to do is keep Shakespeare around.

And I'm explicitly not advocating canceling Shakespeare. And I think that's what they all thought I was doing when I was running those webinars.

So Shakespeare sets Othello in 16th century Venice, which was a very multicultural society because Venice was a sort of trading giant in this time period. So it was really financially lucrative for them to have people from all backgrounds working and living in Venice. And so it's about a Black African, known as a Moor in that time period, who was the captain of the Venetian army.

And it starts with another member of the army sort of screaming and shouting outside the door or window of a fellow's now father-in-law saying that, basically shouting a lot of racist epithets about how his daughter, his white daughter, has married a Black man. And she's done so without her father's consent. So it starts with this idea of there's been some sort of violation.

A Black man has married a white woman, and this is a problem.

So it ends up at the court of the Duke who is dealing with other issues because the Turks are now circling around their outpost in Cyprus, and they need Othello to do some work for them and to fight off the Turks. So the Duke says, oh, look, it's okay. It's fine. You know, Othello is a great guy. We've all worked with him. We know him really well.

And that's when the line comes out: He is far more fair than Black.

And what he's saying there is that essentially, look, he doesn't act Black. He acts white. He acts like us. So let's just be okay with this.

And so what you have there is a situation in which somebody who has kind of violated a kind of racial code in Venetian society is given a pass because he's very useful to that society. What happens in the rest of the play is that lago works on him and tries to convince him that his wife is having an affair with his lieutenant.

And unfortunately, Othello believes him, and they plot to murder Desdemona, and they do. He does. And it's a heartbreaking, heart-wrenching play.

And what's difficult about it is that it seems to fulfill stereotypes about Black men and Black masculinity. So it's always been a bit of a problem to stage. So yeah, it's a fantastic play, though.

It's a real sort of exploration of interracial relationships in a white-dominant society.

Yeah, I think it's harder in classrooms. And that's something that I actually been thinking about how to address a colleague of mine, and I've been discussing it. Because a lot of teachers, especially white teachers, aren't necessarily equipped to have a conversation about race that isn't going to make all the students in the room feel objectified or uncomfortable.

And so what I'm trying to, what I also get at the book is about discomfort, being able to lean into the discomfort of having conversations. And Shakespeare, for him, he was an advocate of discomfort. You were not comfortable when you went to see a Shakespearean tragedy.

He didn't want you to be.

And so we should try and be comfortable in the classroom. And there are productions who have tried very hard to lean into the racial tension and angst in the play.

But often it can be unsuccessful, particularly if it's a white director that sees too much optimism in the play. And says, oh, this play really, it's not about race. It's about redemption of characters who've been singled out for some reason.

I'm like, well, the reason is race.

My goal was always to show how it rears its head, even in the moments that are the most unexpected or that seems innocuous.

But what is interesting is that in a lot of his comedies, he's using anti-Black racism as a source of humor. And, you know, that would have made people laugh, some of the comments that you hear in some of his most delightful comedies. And because the racism isn't the undercurrent of the play, that it's easy to miss it.

So you'll just get all of a sudden a comment like Much Ado About Nothing, where the character Benedict is talking with his friend Claudio about a woman that Claudio has a crush on. And he says, oh, she's too brown for a fair praise. And that would have made people laugh.

What he's saying is that she's not attractive enough to praise her, and fair in that time was a very elite form of whiteness. It meant beautiful and virtuous and white with a luster or a shine, and that shine is the virtue of a woman. And no woman of color could ever achieve that, because she's not white enough.

So he's saying that this woman is too brown, even if she's not brown, but he's using brown as a way of denigrating people of color.

But I think Shakespeare is still valuable for us because of the contemporary nature of some of the issues that he raises in his plays.

I mean, there's a great speech in Midsummer Night's Dream where he talks about the destruction of the planet because of the way people are behaving towards each other. And the powerful resonance of that today just is unmissable. So Shakespeare is able to articulate or help you to think about questions that are so urgent in your own moment.

I think other writers need to be brought into dialogue with Shakespeare. If you teach Othello, teach Toni Morrison's Desdemona, right?

It's incredibly lucrative intellectually and emotionally to keep Shakespeare in the curriculum.”

—Farah Karim Cooper: Director of Education at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and author of The Great White Bard, How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race

[dontdenymeshakespeare]

Mid Year Book Freakout Tag

[butchhamlet]

"But there is something particular about Cleopatra and the imaginative escape she offers for white performers. She presents a fantasy of a stately queen with an erotic power that white actresses can inhabit and take pleasure in without facing any of the difficulties faced by Black women. Like white European colonial settlers, they occupy her character though only briefly. And this is nothing new. In the seventeenth century, one aristocratic woman had her portrait painted as Cleopatra—a performative act in which it was possible to pretend to be the kind of woman she could never actually be within the chaste and virtuous bounds of Renaissance white womanhood. The sitter is identified as Lady Anne Clifford. A Jacobean lady in Egyptian regalia, according to seventeenth-century orientalist notion of national costume, holds an asp above her breast, iconically invoking Cleopatra. For a long time, it seems, white women have stepped into the fantasy of the dark queen. It seems odd that Antony and Cleopatra was not always viewed as one of Shakespeare's race plays. That is changing, finally. If theatre directors continue to centralise whiteness in their readings of the play, however, it in many ways replicates Caesar's triumph over Egypt. We relive Cleopatra's defeat every time we watch a white woman play her—due respect to Dames Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Harriet Walter, and Eve Best. But we begin to see more clearly the Egyptian Queen's own prophetic vision as she chose to end her life on her own terms. She imagined herself being performed for years to come by actors who do not resemble her in any way—and that is, for the most part, what has happened."

—Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper, The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race (emphasis mine)

[veliseraptor]

March Reading Recap

Juliet: The Life and Afterlives of Shakespeare's First Tragic Heroine by Sophie Duncan. I actually really liked this one! It was an interesting look at several different lenses that have been used over time to look at Juliet (specifically Juliet, not the play), including the relationship between fascism and Juliet in Verona, Italy and the development of West Side Story (didn't know Juliet was Jewish in an early version). I enjoy sort of niche/specific books focusing on a very particular subject, and this book scratched that itch well.

The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It by Helen Scales. I read this book too soon after The Underworld by Susan Casey which, while not necessarily a better book, covered a lot of the same terrain. The trouble with a keen interest in a niche topic is, I suppose, that the books on it can start to get repetitive sometimes. It was still good, though, and this one focused a bit less on the history of human exploration than Casey did and a bit more on the ecosystems themselves, which I did welcome.

Blood of the Chosen and Emperor of Ruin by Django Wexler. The second and third books in the series that started with Ashes of the Sun - both continued the trend of "I don't know that I'd call these particularly good works of literature but they were very enjoyable and propulsive." The second book was stronger than the third - I ended up feeling like the conclusion of the trilogy was weaker and a little rushed, but I still enjoyed the experience as a whole and would offer at least a tentative, general recommendation of the series for those looking for a fantasy series that's not particularly innovative or serious but is an exciting ride.

The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis. This book reminded me a little bit of Such Desperate Glory but wasn't quite as well done, I don't think. The back compared it to Mass Effect but I don't really see that as a reasonable comparison. Possibly one of my favorite things about it was the cover design, which fucks. I still liked it, though, and I'm going to read the sequel.

The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race by Farah Karim-Cooper. Sometimes when I read things I feel like a snot because I go "this is interesting information but the writing feels a little amateurish" and that was my situation with this book. It was good analysis and interesting to read, though sometimes the "and this is how this is modern-ly relevant! q-anon mention" felt a little bit...ehhh, unnecessary, but the writing itself was...yeah. It felt amateurish. Which might just be a result of the book itself being targeted at a particular audience that's less academically-minded than I am, that's certainly possible, but it did affect my enjoyment of the book.

Last Days by Adam Nevill. Mostly this was good spooky fun, though it lost me with the "the ultimate bad guy is an overweight bisexual actor with AIDS" (it's a little more complicated than that, but not enough). Too bad, because conceptually and in terms of imagery it could've been very good. Between this and my last Nevill, I might have to give future books a pass. My search for horror that isn't playing on bigoted tropes apparently continues, since I'm on a bit of a streak there with this and Ring.

China: A History by John Keay. I'd call this one a solid overview despite the choice to use "bureaux" for the plural. However, I'm taking a lot of it with a grain of salt since as far as I can tell he didn't use many or possibly any Chinese secondary sources, and relied primarily for quotations/analysis on English secondary sources. I would've liked to see more of a balance. Still, as far as background information and a general broad history goes, it feels like it was worth reading for me to get a little more background/grounding in history I don't have a lot of familiarity with. (Also, holy shit did Ken Liu crib hard on Liu Bang and Xiang Yu for The Grace of Kings and now I know that.)

Remnants of Filth: vol. 3 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou. I continue to really enjoy this book and this volume might be my favorite yet - the flashbacks were satisfying to fill in some of the gaps in mysteries as yet unrevealed, and having Gu Mang fully "back" (more or less) is a fun development that is already having consequences changing the dynamic between him and Mo Xi in delightfully angsty ways. Of the cnovels I'm currently in the middle of this one is close to LHJC as far as my favorite.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi. This one is what I think people would call a "romp" which is all well and good and I probably should've known what I was getting into, but I think I am just not much of a "romp" reader. It was fun, I guess? But I don't know that I felt like it was good, and I'm probably not going to go around recommending it. My first Scalzi, and I don't know if that's typical of him, but I probably won't be in a hurry to pick up another one anytime soon.

Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation ed./trans. by Ken Liu. Short story collections are really hit and miss for me, but this was actually a collection that was pretty hit all the way through! Very interesting stories, a couple I'm still thinking about. I'm looking forward to reading my other collection of short stories in translation, which includes some fantasy - some of these actually felt somewhere between fantasy and science fiction in a very interesting way that I liked.

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phew. I read a lot last month! Currently I'm reading Medea by Eilish Quin (we'll see how that goes); I have on my docket The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (recommended to me) and I think I might reread She Who Became the Sun so I can read He Who Drowned the World. I've been on more of a fiction than a nonfiction kick of late, but I am eyeing Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn and might make that part of my rotation. we shall see!

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

Books by BIPOC Authors August 2023

🦇 I grew up surrounded by a melting pot of cultures, diverse communities, and unique experiences. Despite the different sources of those multicultural voices, their stories still covered universal topics of colonialism, migration, identity, and race. Each story was another flavor, another sweet spice adding to that melting pot. Today, we have books by BIPOC authors that put those unique voices to the page. If you're interested in traveling to different worlds, whether familiar or foreign, here are a few books by BIPOC authors to add to your TBR! 🦇

✨ Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang ✨ The Dark Place by Britney S. Lewis ✨ Forged by Blood by Ehigbor Okuson ✨ Accidentally in Love by Danielle Jackson ✨ A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power ✨ Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey ✨ The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America by Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson ✨ Hangman by Maya Binyam ✨ The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (Historical Fiction) ✨ Under the Tamarind Tree by Nigar Alam ✨ Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas ✨ An American Immigrant by Johanna Rojas Vann

🧭 Forgive Me Not by Jennifer Baker 🧭 Two Tribes by Emily Bowen Cohen 🧭 A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars by Hakeem Oluseyi and Joshua Horwitz 🧭 Writing in Color: Fourteen Writers on the Lessons We've Learned (edited by) Nafiza Azad and Melody Simpson 🧭 Ghost Book by Remy Lai 🧭 The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang 🧭 Plantains and Our Becoming by Melania Luisa Marte 🧭 Forty Words for Love by Aisha Saeed 🧭 The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race by Farah Karim-Cooper 🧭 Take the Long Way Home by Rochelle Alers 🧭 Swim Home to the Vanished by Brendan Shay Basham 🧭 Actually Super by Adi Alsaid

✨ Never a Hero by Vanessa Len ✨ I Fed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea ✨ The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu ✨ Night of the Living Queers, edited by Shelly Page ✨ Sign of the Slayer by Sharina Harris ✨ Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim ✨ My Father the Panda Killer by Jamie Jo Hoang ✨ Barely Floating by Lilliam Rivera ✨Happiness Falls by Angie Kim ✨ A Tall Dark Trouble by Vanessa Montalban ✨ Neverwraith by Shakir Rashaan ✨ House of Marionne by J. Elle

[bitethebard]

june; from the archives

Happy June! Happy pride month to everyone <3 This month's prompt for the Suck Your TBR Dry Reading Challenge is mid-life crisis!

Desperation, fear of change, the lack of control, the unknown future, the chaos of the now, the possibility of the what-ifs, the community to fall back on.  What can we become? Ideas: memoirs, change, sequels, mixed media, multiverse, a sophomore release, older characters, stories about a disruption of the norm

I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately, but I'm going to attempt to read Hamlet finally for this month <3 In May, I was reading The Great White Bard by Farah Karim-Cooper, and it is very good. Highly recommend it for any Shakespeare enjoyer.

Reminder; you can follow the challenge via storygraph here.

Happy Reading! And share what you've read so far :)

[goosemixtapes]

max's november 2023 reads

so many online articles this month. which is maybe why i feel like i'm making 0 progress on my hard copy books. in december i'll need to reprioritize, it seems. i also wrote next to nothing this month, which probably explains why i read so many online articles.

fiction

Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, books 5-6

the latter half of Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin (again)

Shakespeare's Richard III (again, + i started Linda Charnes' Notorious Identity)

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins (review)

Gregor and the Marks of Secret by Suzanne Collins (review)

Vergil's Georgics, book 3

i continue to chug away at asoiaf #3 but god knows it is neverending

nonfiction

Getting Involved and Staying Regulated by Devon Price (↳ on finding your place in the fight for palestinian liberation)

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin (↳ on the patriarchal domination of the war narrative, and our other options)

The Cool Kid's Philosopher by Nathan J. Robinson (↳ on Ben Shapiro)

Propaganda 101: How To Defend A Massacre by Nathan J. Robinson (↳ on biased reporting, using the I/P conflict as an example, though this is from 2018 rather than recent)

A Guide For High School Students On How To Avoid Propaganda by Nathan J. Robinson (↳ what the title says; i found it useful despite not being in high school anymore)

the latter half of Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price (review)

What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? by Clare Dederer (↳ found this one rather disappointing. i like the start, but the gender takes feel lukewarm and imo there's not enough emphasis on the structural vs. individual. this is a nice counterpoint)

Physical Destruction in Whole or in Part by Saree Makdisi (↳ "What we’re witnessing in Gaza, in other words, is not self-defense; it is an opportunistic offensive. It is not a “war,” the word used mendaciously and misleadingly by most of the mainstream Western press; it is a campaign of genocidal violence.")

the first chapter of Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

the first two chapters of The Great White Bard: How To Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race by Farah Karim-Cooper

a close read of my MFA statement of purpose by Brandon Taylor (↳ on goals, responsibilities, and fictions)

On Mental Hospitals by Ozy Brennan (↳ this is pretty short but very worth it)

How An Algorithm Feels From Inside by Eliezer Yudkowsky (↳ on the psychology of the tree-falls-in-a-forest question)

Scrupulosity Sequence #3: Load-Bearing Things by Ozy Brennan (↳ posts i am clinging to with my fingernails)

Why Are AMAB Trans People Denied The Closet? by Julia Serano (↳ on "gendered socialization" and closeted transfemininity)

Trans Masc Misogyny and the Red Six of Spades by Jude Ellison S. Doyle (↳ "No-one is ever actually a man. Everyone is always in the act of proving they’re a man, first by dominating women and children, then by dominating other men, establishing higher and higher rungs of man-ness until at the end, presumably, the one Real Man in existence gets to be in charge of everyone and everything else.")

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved By America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies by Spenser Ackerman (↳ clicked for the title, stayed for the comprehensive and vicious takedown of kissinger's crimes)

[measureformeasure]

@lesbiancassius' march reads

books (once again, so busy...)

Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward - a beautiful, hardy book I've been meaning to read for years. I read this as an ebook but I wish I'd had it in my hand.

short fiction & poetry

Waste My Life, Hera Lindsay Bird - I love Bird's voice so very much.

life is great it’s like being given a rare and historically significant flute and using it to beat a harmless old man to death with

Jealousy, Hera Lindsay Bird

Leisure, Hannah, Does Not Agree with You (2), Hannah Gamble - loosely after Catullus.

articles

Interrogating the Shakespeare System, Madeline Sayet - on @goosemixtapes's suggestion - a good read for reckoning with the place of Shakespeare in education and theatre now.

Classical studies needs structural change, an interview with Dr. Dan-el Padilla Peralta

Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Jamil Jan Kochai

Bridges, Callista Pitman - beautiful.

tbr

The Great White Bard, Farah Karim-Cooper

Towards a Poor Theatre, Jerzy Grotowski (I own the most hilariously water-damaged copy of this book that I got for free on the side of the road.)

Scorched, Wajdi Mouawad

There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death, or the Born-Again Crow, Caleigh Crow

[queenofzan]

Rules: answer and tag 9 people

Tagged by @transsexual-homunculus

Favourite colour: magenta!

Last song listened to: on its own on purpose? Stop by the Spice Girls

Currently reading: The Great White Bard by Farah Karim-Cooper and Exordia by Seth Dickinson

Currently watching: At this exact moment: Silent Hill 3: Exploring Womanhood Through Horror

Currently craving: potato chips so I can finish our french onion dip :(

Coffee or tea: coffee

uhhh @prinzette @darkravn @cygnahime @swordwitch @witchking-jr and if you're like, "aww why didn't you tag me" then let's just pretend that I did!

[shakespearenews]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/08/23/farah-karim-cooper-great-white-bard/

...the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, as it’s officially known, is sometimes too dark, especially for the actors of color who are increasingly cast in major roles onstage.

“It really places them at a disadvantage because they can’t be seen,” said Farah Karim-Cooper, seated in the playhouse’s pit...

A decade ago, she advised the indoor theater’s design based on Jacobean architectural tradition. But during the Globe’s first Shakespeare and Race Festival, which she organized in 2018, she hosted a workshop in the theater with actors of color and learned how they were disadvantaged by some of the set and lighting design decisions....

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...She anchors her claims to current events, bolstering arguments about Shakespeare being hijacked by White nationalists with a reference to a little-known letter sent by American far-right extremists to Washington’s Folger Shakespeare Library ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, reassuring the library that the mob had “no intention of damaging, trespassing, or otherwise altering your facility in anyway” during the violent events. 

[toiletpotato]

Below I have included a few examples of various scenes from Romeo and Juliet. Clips 1 and 4 come from the Globe Theatre (Shakespeare's theatre.) After that, there are a few more links I believe are educational/enjoyable/beneficial/helpful.

if you have the time, I highly recommend checking out this discussion held by The Globe (Shakespeare's theatre) in which scholars from a variety of backgrounds (Black academics, academics of color, and white scholars) discuss the topic of race and Shakespeare's works.

This is a part of the larger webinar series, Anti-Racist Shakespeare. Below is the one on Romeo and Juliet:

here is the rest of the playlist

^^ this is a trailer for the African American Shakespeare Company's production of Romeo and Juliet. They are based in California in the US.

^^ this is a TEDx Talk by Marshall W. Mabry IV, talking about how Shakespeare is FOR EVERYONE.

this ^^ video discusses the history of Black and Asian performers that perform Shakespeare in the UK. It discusses a project by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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If you have the means, please consider supporting The Classical Theatre in Harlem, who in their 2014-15 season, mounted a production of Romeo N Juliet, which featured a predominantly Black American cast. They work to bring classical theatre pieces and theatre education to a diverse audience.

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Last, but not least, if you enjoy radio plays/podcasts, I'd like to recommend The Public Theater's 2021 production of Romeo y Julieta, starring Lupita Nyong'o as Julieta. It is a bilingual production (English and Spanish), but they have the script available to follow along with (that provides translations from one language to another). It is available on most platforms that host podcasts. There are also production notes and an afterglow which would be beneficial to listen to if you would like to learn more about the production. It's a really lovely and lively production. I hope they keep it available forever.

[thegirlwiththelantern]

WWW Wednesday | 18 October

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Sam of Taking on a World of Words. To take part you answer three questions, which are: What are you currently reading?What did you recently finish reading?What do you think you’ll read next? 📖 What did you recently finish reading? The Great White Bard (narr) by Farah Karim-Cooper How is Shakespeare still relevant as titans of white Western history are…