Bridging the Shakespeare-Latinx Divide

Bridging the Shakespeare-Latinx Divide Bridging the Shakespeare-Latinx Divide Bridging the Shakespeare-Latinx Divide Cross-Institutional Research Working Group will consider how Latino/a/x studies can diversify, enhance, and intensify Shakespeare studies. While critical race studies that scrutinize assumptions about race and racism both in and through Shakespeare have been produced, critical investigations of the intersections between Shakespeare and Latino/a/x studies are relatively underrepresented. A unique set of historical, methodological, and theoretical questions emerge when one examines Shakespeares plays, poems, and cultural capital through the lens of Latino/a/x studies. The proposed working groupconsisting of leading BIPOC early modern scholars Dr. Ruben Espinosa (ASU), Dr. Ayanna Thompson (ASU), Dr. Kyle Grady (UC Irvine), Dr. Joseph Ortiz (UTEP), and three doctoral fellows in each of the two yearsaims to engender research focused on Latino/a/x perspectives of Shakespeare, and also to strategize how best to bridge the divide between Latino/a/x students/audiences and Shakespeare. Employing critical race, ethnic, and Latino/a/x studies as the guiding foci for conversations, workshops, research, and public events, this group will be vividly attuned to the changing demographics of the U.S. student population. With these students in mind, the working group will uncover novel strategies of resistance through Latino/a/x perspectives, which have too often been rendered invisible within Shakespeare studies.