Shakespeare Across Cultures

Shakespeare is the most translated, staged, filmed and studied author in world literature. He is adapted, localized, domesticated and appropriated on the page, stage, and other media in many languages and cultures across the world. This 4-credit course, which analyses how Shakespeare influences and is influenced by the languages and cultures of the world, is intended for postgraduate students of English Literature. The objectives of this course in which many Shakespeare experts in India will guide students are to analyse Shakespeare by using discourses of language, race, gender, identity and geopolitics, explore how Shakespeare is negotiated on page, stage, screen and classroom discourses, outline Shakespeare adaptations and the responses they evoke in diverse cultures, demonstrate how cultures transfigure Shakespeare in their literary and cultural terrain, illustrate the reasons for reworking and adapting Shakespeare in various cultures, show how contemporary viewers critically respond to the reworkings of Shakespeare, and find alternative frameworks to rework the essentially Eurocentric Shakespeare discourses.