Race and Blackness in Elizabethan England

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When did the concept of race develop? How far should we look back to find the attitudes that bolster white supremacy? We ask Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy, an assistant professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College, and the author of a chapter in the monumental new Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race called “Barbarian Moors: Documenting Racial Formation in Early Modern England.” Dadabhoy takes us back to Shakespeare’s London—a more diverse city than you might have imagined—to look at the racial ideologies reflected in two plays: George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar and William Shakespeare’s Othello. Plus, we learn more about race in medieval crusade and conversion romances, and get a sense of how Dadabhoy approaches issues of race in her Shakespeare classes. Dadabhoy is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Ambereen Dadabhoy is an assistant professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Her chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race is called “Barbarian Moors: Documenting Racial Formation in Early Modern England.” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. Dadabhoy held fellowships at the Folger in 2011 and 2016, and participated in a Folger NEH Summer Institute "Shakespeare from the Globe to the Global" in 2011. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 25, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “In the Old Age, Black Was Not Counted Fair,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode available on folger.edu. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	How far should we look back to find the attitudes that bolster white supremacy?
0:05.8	It turns out we should look back pretty far.
0:14.5	From the Folger's Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:18.9	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger's director.
0:21.4	We've been engaged here at the Folger in a series of critical race conversations.
0:27.1	And a question that comes up a lot is this.
0:30.5	When did the concept of race begin to appear?
0:35.0	As you can imagine, like pretty much anything involving the subject of race,
0:40.3	that's a controversial question, including in the world of Shakespeare studies.
0:45.3	But it's one that a cadre of younger scholars is diving into these days,
0:50.3	building upon work done by the pioneering black feminist and pre-modern critical race
0:55.8	scholars who came before them. One of those thinkers is Ombrein Databoy, an assistant professor
1:02.4	of literature at Harvey Mudd, the liberal arts engineering science and mathematics college in
1:08.0	Claremont, California. Dr. Databoy researches the role of identity and difference
1:14.5	in literature, and she has a chapter in the monumental new Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and
1:21.2	Race that's called Barbarian Moors documenting racial formation in early modern England.
1:29.6	The materials she gathered for that chapter, and frankly a large portion of her entire academic
1:35.0	career, are based around the idea that students can and should be moved toward a new way
1:41.2	of looking at concepts of race in the plays of Shakespeare and in all the
1:46.1	writings of his contemporaries.
1:48.9	She joined us to talk about all of this for a podcast we call, In the Old Age, Black
1:54.6	was not counted fair.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Folger Shakespeare Library, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Folger Shakespeare Library and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.