A year ago today I defended my prospectus on the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy. As I began working, I finally acknowledged a gut feeling that I’d attempted to ignore... I didn’t want to exclusively work on Shakespeare anymore. A thread

Of course there are friends and colleagues who were good-heartedly “well yeah, Shakespeare is [insert problematic things here]” And obviously I knew that, and I knew most of the field knew that. I greatly admire the work of #ShakeRace and revel in their phenomenal and vital work

But I also felt that the field didn’t need another white scholar taking up space in Shakespeare studies. This is not to say that the labor of dismantling and making visible the work and culture surrounding Shakespeare should rest on the shoulders of BIPOC scholars, but

I knew that at this time I couldn’t contribute in a way that felt appropriate. Where my larger focuses lie are within one key aspect of the Trilogy: incarceration and abolition (if you hadn’t already noticed.) But of course Shakespeare & prison is nothing new.

Prison theatre is nearly synonymous with prison Shakespeare in the US and I am particularly interested in an ignored population: recently released individuals (a group not given the same attention within prison theatre).

And where I see the arts and social justice work going in this subfield is not with Shakespeare but perhaps specifically without Shakespeare. New work development and/or using texts that don’t have centuries worth of imperialism (especially being wielded IN the carceral state)...

Open up the voices that are ignored and forgotten. This is a long winded way to say that my dissertation has fundamentally changed in many ways (the Trilogy is only a chapter now) and that on today, Shakespeare’s birthday...

I announce my break with him. Sorry to dump you on your birthday but you also are the issue here so... Anyway, Shakes will still feature in my work, albeit in very different ways, but he is now in the shadows. *end*

P.S. I’m writing this for me and am very much aware of broad generalizations made in this thread but Twitter does not yet offer footnotes or endnotes.