About the Book:

Repositioning Shakespeare offers an original assessment of a broad range of texts and cultural events that appropriate Shakespeare. Examining these materials within the context of the nation in a postcolonial era, author and scholar Thomas Cartelli considers:

• polemical essays by Walt Whitman
• the nineteenth-century play, Jack Cade, commissioned and staged by the first major American Shakespeare actor
• an essay on labour-management reform by social activist Jane Addams
• novels by Aphra Behn, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Michelle Cliff, Tayeb Salih, Nadine Gordimer and Robert Stone
• the 1849 Astor Place Riot

Cartelli places particular emphasis on redefining the postcolonial in order to find a place for America. In doing so, Repositioning Shakespeare makes a considerable contribution to the continuing debate about the uses we make of Shakespeare.

What people say:

"...compelling political readings of Shakespearean appropriation." — The Shakespeare Quarterly

"Repositioning Shakespeare is a very well researched book, full of insight both into Shakespeare, American and world-wide politics and social affairs and, most of all, the postcolonial issue. For anyone engaged in postcolonial studies it is of great use and it is certainly a pleasure to read." — Modern Languages

"...it exemplifies the best of cultural analysis." — Symploke

About the Author:

Thomas Cartelli is Professor of English and Film Studies Muhlenberg College. He teaches courses on Shakespeare, Shakespeare on Film, Postcolonial Literatures, Caribbean Writing, the Indian diaspora, and James Joyce for the English Department, and World Cinemas, Film Cultures of the Middle-East, and New Asian Cinemas for the Film Studies program. He is the author of Repositioning Shakespeare.