Shakespeare and Civil Unrest in Britain and the United States

Shakespeare and Civil Unrest in Britain and the United States extends the growing body of scholarship on Shakespeare’s appropriation by examining how the plays have been invoked during periods of extreme social, political, and racial turmoil.

Mark Bayer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the author of Theatre, Community, and Civic Engagement in Jacobean London (2011), a finalist for the 2012 George Freedley Memorial Award. He has written extensively on the enduring cultural authority of Shakespeare’s plays in contexts as diverse as nineteenth century America and the modern Middle East.

Joseph Navitsky is Associate Professor of English at West Chester University. His essays on religious conflict and early modern drama have appeared in English Literary Renaissance, The International Journal of the Classical Tradition, and Texas Studies of Literature and Language, and his most recent work on American receptions of Shakespeare has appeared in the Journal of American Culture. He served as assistant director of the Shakespeare Association of American from 2013-2016.