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Prof. Ian Smith delivering the Shakespeare Birthday Lecture @FolgerLibrary "Whiteness: A Primer for Understanding Shakespeare." Kathleen Lynch detailing the history of the birthday lecture and the history of this lecture in "the American response to Shakespeare." 1/ #ShakeRace
Lynch tells us that Smith will challenge some of the assumptions we have about Shakespeare and the unexamined perspective that we often bring. 2/
Whiteness has something to do with skin color because as a culture we read bodies in a certain way and assign values to those bodies. This is also a question of ideology and a pervasive set of attitudes. Associated with a class, gatekeepers and the Shax industry. --Smith 3/
There's still a skepticism of race in Shakespeare. That Blackness as produced by a white culture, and explore and expose it for the limitations it places on real people of culture in history and today. 4/ #ShakeRace
We have to think about the status of Black people in England. Were they servants what was the connection of servitude to slavery. We also have to think of nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism as larger movements within this arena. 5/
Phase 2: What about the other half of the equation? Blackness doesn't exist on its own. We have to ask, what about whiteness? What is that whiteness in the context of Shakespeare. 6/
Because the practitioners in the Shax industry have been predominantly white. There has been a refusal to read race because it would put their whiteness up for interrogation! 
#ShakeRace 7/
#ShakeRace 7/
White invisibility is protected. It's a strategic move to dismiss race from Shakespeare because it obscures the relation of their participation in whiteness and its power. 8/
The charge of anachronism is a defensive posture. If you don't have to think about race. You don't have to think about our own race. Whiteness prevents one from seeing and from being seen. "Racial blindspots." 9/
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These blind spots make us impoverished readers. There's more to see when you remove these blinders. It invites us to be in a position to refashion the question of why Shakespeare now. If we are speaking from the perspective of race and whiteness. We can speak about urgency. 10/
We can no longer deny that race is deeply woven into the fabric of American culture in ways that disempower and make people more vulnerable. After this, can we go back to Shakespeare as status quo? What if we use this moment to say what we've learned? 11/
How we have isolated race from our conversations and isolated Shakespeare from race, we need to address these questions. 12/
On pedagogy: I don't approach race as being painful, but as opening the door so that we can have a long overdue conversation. I'm looking for racial literacy as an outcome. We cannot graduate students from college who are racially illiterate. 13/
Race is about a dynamic relationship among and between people. It is an active thing. How can we use Shakespeare to teach these things? It can't be just that I read literature but about what skills have I acquired from this act. 14/
Lynch asks about "We are Othello," in special issue of SQ edited by @ProfKFH. I, [AD] would add, that #ShakeRace is not a new field. 15/
Smith notes Hamlet's ultimate white privilege in getting a military funeral. Othello, a military man does not get that. We have to ask ourselves where we stand in relation to Othello's isolation. Othello is stamped by his Blackness. Iago has the mobility of whiteness. 16/
Time for Q&A: Specific examples of ways to look at race in Shakespeare's texts. Smith: sonnets, "from fairest beauty," whiteness is there, it is imbricated with notions of beauty. The Shakespeare persona constructed as blackness in contrast to the whiteness of beloved. 17/
The direst hand, darkened hand, the darkening is related to the blackening of actors on the stage to play Moors. Question: how does the racial makeup of your class affect how you teach; We're socialized to teach Shakespeare as a white object regardless of student demographics 18/
We're all taught to read as white readers. Cites Morrison. Like Shakespeare we're all positioned as white. White positioning is what we have to navigate. 19/
Casting q: is it important for characters to be racially accurate? ans: it depends on the production or we might cast more conceptually in order to directly address race. 20/
