From Metaphor to Metonym: Shakespearean Recognition in the United States University

Authors

  • Carla Della Gatta University of Maryland, US

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.27.11
Crossmark check for up

Keywords:

Shakespeare, Berkeley, college curriculum, English major, canonization, recognition, metonym

Abstract

This essay historicizes the Shakespeare curriculum at UC Berkeley’s English department over the last one hundred years. An elite research university in the United States, UC Berkeley’s extensive course offerings have expanded due to changes in undergraduate education and external cultural shifts. With a growing number of courses on sexuality, race, gender, etc., that became part of the purview of an English department, the teaching of Shakespeare expanded as well. I demonstrate how the emphasis on Shakespeare in the U.S. undergraduate curriculum shifts over time from one form of recognition—an acknowledgement of his value or worth—to a recognition of identifying with his work based on prior experience. Distinguishing between courses that combine “Shakespeare and” and those that combine “Literature and,” I expose the consequences each has for the canonicity of both Shakespeare and subject fields with which his works are placed in conversation, explicitly and implicitly. I argue that the expansion of Shakespeare in the American undergraduate curriculum coincides with and depends on the compression of key aspects of interpretation that pose challenges for the new knowledges it seeks to create. I illuminate how an expanded Shakespeare curriculum saw a compression of Shakespeare into metonymic mythic status, which has implications for the teaching of literature from various identity and cultural groups. I demonstrate how the origins of an expansive undergraduate Shakespeare curriculum in the United States positions Shakespeare as the interlocutor for a wide range of topics.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Carla Della Gatta, University of Maryland, US

is Associate Professor of Theatre Scholarship and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland. She is a theatre historian and performance theorist who examines ethnic and bilingual theatre through dramaturgy and aurality. She is author of Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (2023) and co-editor of Shakespeare and Latinidad (2021). She is on the Steering Committee for the Latinx Theatre Commons, and she is the Digital Humanities Editor for The Fornés Institute. She serves on the editorial boards of Shakespeare Survey and the Arden series on Shakespeare and Social Justice.

References

Abramovitch, Seth. “The Top 25 Drama Schools in the World.” The Hollywood Reporter. 18 June 2022. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/the-top-25-drama-schools-in-the-world/. Accessed 1 November 2022.
Google Scholar

Assmann, Aleida. “Canon and Archive.” A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. Eds. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2008. 97-108.
Google Scholar

Bayer, Mark. “Henry Norman Hudsom and the Origins of American Shakespeare Studies.” Shakespeare Quarterly 68.3 (Fall 2017): 271-95.
Google Scholar

Berkeley Academic Guide and Schedule of Classes Archive. Guide.Berkeley.edu. https://guide.berkeley.edu/archive/. Accessed 20 November 2022.
Google Scholar

“Best National University Rankings,” U.S. News and World Report. USNews.com. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/. Accessed 28 December 2022.
Google Scholar

Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. Trans. Charles A. and Maria-Odilia Leal McBride. London: Pluto Press, 1979.
Google Scholar

Burton, “Shakespeare in Liberal Arts Education.” News. Whittier College. Fall 2013.
Google Scholar

“California Community Colleges By Tuition Cost,” Community College Review. Community CollegeReview.com. https://www.communitycollegereview.com/ tuition-stats/california/. Accessed 28 December 2022.
Google Scholar

Cantor, Paul A. “Shakespeare-‘for all time’?” Public Interest. Issue 110. Winter 1993. 34-48.
Google Scholar

Coeyman, Marjorie. “In Love With Shakespeare.” The Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0528/p13s02-lecl.html/. Accessed 28 May 2002.
Google Scholar

Dawson, Anthony B. “Performance and Participation: Desdemona, Foucault, and the actor’s body”. Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance. Ed. James C. Bulman. London: Routledge, 1996. Print. 29-45.
Google Scholar

“Film and Media at Berkeley.” Department of Film & Media, UC Berkeley. https://filmmedia.berkeley.edu/. Accessed 20 December 2022.
Google Scholar

Gutierrez, Miguel, Nadine Georges-Graves, Guisela Latorre and Shannon Winnubst. “Does Abstraction Belong to White People?” Moderated by Joni Boyd Acuff. Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, YouTube video, 1:40:31. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYkiKEcRUKE/. Accessed 23 January 2020.
Google Scholar

Haughey, Joseph. “The History of Shakespeare in American Schools.” Shakespeare Unlimited. https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/history-of-shakespeare-in-schools/. Accessed 7 January 2020.
Google Scholar

Manoff, Marlene. “Theories of the Archive from Across Disciplines.” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 4.1 (2004): 9-25.
Google Scholar

Maxwell, Lynn. “’Shakespeare for All times and Peoples:’ Shakespeare at Spelman College and the Atlanta University Center.” Journal of American Studies 54.1 (2020): 66-73.
Google Scholar

Mazer, Cary M. Double Shakespeares: Emotional-Realist Acting and Contemporary Performance. Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015. Print.
Google Scholar

Menzer, Paul. “The Laws of Athens: Shakespeare and the Campus Economy.” Shakespeare on the University Stage. Ed. Andrew James Hartley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 201-15.
Google Scholar

Mullaney, Steven. The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Print.
Google Scholar

“myth, n.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, July 2023. https:// doi-org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/10.1093/OED/5411360879/. Accessed 2 January 2023.
Google Scholar

“recognition, n.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, July 2023. https://doi-org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/10.1093/OED/1092821039/. Accessed 2 January 2023.
Google Scholar

“Shakespeare Association of America: 1973 Meeting.” Shakespeare Association of America. ShakespeareAssociation.org. https://shakespeareassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/SAA-1973.pdf/. Accessed 10 June 2021.
Google Scholar

Shakespeare on the University Stage, ed. Andrew James Hartley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Google Scholar

Smith, Ian and Michael Witmore. “Critical Race Conversations: This is Not Who We Are?” Folger Shakespeare Library. 22 April 2021. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8MZqfAalWrg&t=3401s/. Accessed 1 August 2021.
Google Scholar

Smith, Bruce R. “Teaching the Resonances.” Shakespeare Quarterly 48.4 (Winter 1997): 451-55.
Google Scholar

States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Google Scholar

“Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies,” Berkeley: Departments and Programs. University of California History Digital Archives. https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ uchistory/general_history/campuses/ucb/departments_t.htm/. Accessed 20 De-cember 2022.
Google Scholar

Weiskott, Eric. Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
Google Scholar

Downloads

Published

2023-11-23 — Updated on 2023-12-20

Versions

How to Cite

Della Gatta, C. (2023). From Metaphor to Metonym: Shakespearean Recognition in the United States University. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 27(42), 179–193. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.27.11 (Original work published November 23, 2023)

Similar Articles

<< < 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.