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There was a lot that @DrDadabhoy & I couldn't get to yesterday because we ran out of time, but I want to emphasize one point here, & that is how important @ProfKFH's work is to the discipline #FolgerCRC #ShakeRace 1/
I had incorporated the applicability of each of our "assigned" readings into my responses bc I believe that you should address what you assign when you teach/present, which I did for hooks & for @FeliceBlake but had to cut my response on @ProfKFH's book #FolgerCRC #ShakeRace 2/
In Things of Darkness (1995), Hall calls for a more rigorous reading of race in premodern texts & teaches us that descriptions of light & dark became the mechanism through the lines btw self/other are drawn (vs descriptors of beauty/morality) #FolgerCRC #ShakeRace 3/
In just the first 2 pgs of her game-changing book, she lays the foundation for her patient dismantling of the anachronism myth, showing that the language used in the texts about/staging encounter betray the premodern’s participation in race work #FolgerCRC #ShakeRace 4/
Not only this, but @ProfKFH centers the intersection of race & gender, saying that light/dark binaries shape concerns re gender roles due to increased travel (i.e. increased encounter). For her discussions of gender must be embedded in discussions of race #FolgerCRC #ShakeRace 5/
This groundwork is crucial in how I approach teaching race generally but esp when I teach #HarlemDuet. Whereas Shakespeare gives us the specter of a Black woman when he has Othello cite the sybil, Sears centers her, writing an entire play about her story #FolgerCRC #ShakeRace 6/
Sears's play, therefore, stages the phenomenon that @ProfKFH describes in her book (in her work), & putting Hall into conversation w Sears is effective in helping students see how race works in Shakespeare & what it means for WOC to speak back #FolgerCRC #ShakeRace /fin
