As She Likes It tackles the question of how the unruly women at the centre of Shakespeare's comedies have been embodied in performance. Unique amongst both Shakespearean and feminist studies, As She Likes It asks how gender politics affect the production of the comedies, and how gender is represented, both in the text and on the stage.
Enter the Body speculates on how the theatre 'plays' women's bodies, and how audiences read them. Ideal for literature, theatre and gender studies courses, it covers topics such as sex, death, race, gender, culture and politics. Carol Rutter explores the five female characters, Ophelia, Cordelia, Emilia, Cressida and Cleopatra to reconstruct specific theatrical moments that put their bodies spectacularly in play. One of the most provocative writers on women's performances of Shakespeare in Britain today, Rutter also situates these roles on the early modern stage, observing performers such as Kate Winslet, Judi Dench and Whoopi Goldberg.
Nothing less than a rethinking of what we mean when we talk about "men" and "women" of the medieval period, this volume demonstrates how the idea of gender -- in the Middle Ages no less than now -- intersected in subtle and complex ways with other categories of difference. Responding to the insights of postcolonial and feminist theory, the authors show that medieval identities emerged through shifting paradigms -- that fluidity, conflict, and contingency characterized not only gender, but also sexuality, social status, and religion.
Gender, race and the Writing of Empire - Public Discourse and the Boer War
This book looks at the ways Victorian ideas about gender and race supported British imperialism at the turn of the century. It examines the Boer War of 1899-1902 through the war writings of literary figures such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Olive Schreiner, H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, and also through newspapers, propaganda, and other forms of public debate in print. Paula M. Krebs' analysis of the part played by ideas about gender and race in public discourse makes a significant new contribution to the study of British imperialism.
This book offers a radically new reading of Dickens and his major works. It demonstrates that, rather than representing a largely conventional, conservative view of sexuality and gender, he presents a distinctly queer corpus, everywhere fascinated by the diversity of gender roles, the expandability of notions of the family, and the complex multiplicity of sexual desire. The book examines the long overlooked figures of bachelor fathers, martially resistant men, and male nurses. It explores Dickens's attention to a longing, not to reproduce, but to nurture, his interest in healing touch, and his articulation, over the course of his career, of homoerotic desire.
