Farah Karim-Cooper on The Great White Bard (Rebroadcast)

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

Can you love Shakespeare and be an antiracist? Farah Karim-Cooper’s book The Great White Bard explores the language of race and difference in Shakespeare’s plays. Dr. Karim-Cooper also looks at the ways Shakespeare’s work became integral to Britain’s imperial project and its sense of cultural superiority. But, for all this, Karim-Cooper is an unapologetic Shakespeare fan. It’s right there in the subtitle of her book: “How to Love Shakespeare While Talking about Race.” Far from casting Shakespeare out of the classroom or playhouse, Karim-Cooper shows new ways to appreciate him. By drawing connections between the plays and current events, she offers an eyes-wide-open tour of Shakespeare’s continued relevance. Karim-Cooper talks with Barbara Bogaev about the role of race in Titus Andronicus, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and more. Farah Karim-Cooper, is the new Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, was previously a Professor of Shakespeare Studies at King’s College London and Director of Education at Shakespeare’s Globe. The Great White Bard is available now from Viking Press. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Originally published August 15, 2023, updated and rebroadcast November 5, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Paola García Acuña is the web producer and edited this transcript. We had technical help from Mark Dezzani in Surrey and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Barbara Bogave.
0:09.2	It goes without saying that all of us that the Folger loves Shakespeare, something in his plays speaks deeply to us.
0:16.2	But everyone we talk to here on the podcast seems to come to Shakespeare by a different route.
0:21.9	My guest,
0:27.4	Farah Karim Cooper, discovered her love of Shakespeare as a 15-year-old studying Romeo and Juliet.
0:36.0	She recognized her own Pakistani-American family's story of forbidden love in the play. That experience was Karim Cooper's gateway to a career centered on Shakespeare,
0:39.8	a path that eventually brought her to Washington, D.C., to lead the Folger Shakespeare Library as its
0:45.1	new director. But loving an author like Shakespeare doesn't mean accepting his work at face value.
0:50.8	It also means questioning the plays when they reflect the assumptions and prejudices
0:55.3	of Shakespeare's time and confronting the colonial and racist uses Shakespeare's plays have served
1:01.6	over the 400 years since they first came out. Kareem Cooper is a former professor of Shakespeare studies
1:07.5	at King's College London and Director of Education at Shakespeare's Globe.
1:12.2	I spoke with her in the summer of 2023 when her book, The Great White Bard, How to Love Shakespeare
1:18.6	While Talking About Race, was first published. If you could, tell me about the letter you received
1:24.4	a few years ago that prompted you to write this book? Well, the letter I received
1:28.7	was because I had launched at the Globe in 2021 a series of anti-racist Shakespeare webinars.
1:37.3	And the main purpose of these webinars was really just to get an actor and a scholar together
1:42.3	to talk about every single play that we put on in the
1:46.2	theater season in the context of race and identity. And when we launched them, there was a huge
1:52.9	backlash on Twitter and in some of the more conservative of British newspapers.
1:59.1	And when you say backlash, do you mean like hate mail?
2:02.4	Hate mail, yeah, absolute hate mail.
	...

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