Acknowledgements
Act One
Shakespeare Behind Bars: Julius Caesar at Luther Luckett
Correctional Complex
Spiritual Shakespeare: Criminality and the Discourse of
Conversion
Act Two
"Words Before Blows": Sammie Byron, Brutus
"Most Noble Brother, You Have Done Me Wrong": DeMond Bush, Mark
Antony
"Have You Not Love Enough to Bear with Me?": Ron Brown, Cassius
Intermission: Othello: Unplugged at Luther Luckett
Correctional Complex
Act Three
The Luckett Symposium on Shakespeare and Race: Titus Andronicus,
Merchant of Venice, and Othello
"George Bush Doesn't Care about Black People": Agnes Wilcox's
Julius Caesar at Northeast Correctional Center
Act Four
"Romans, Countrymen, Lovers!": The Shakespeare Behind Bars Tour at
the Kentucky Correctional Institute for Women
"Unsex Me Here": Playing the Lady at Luckett
Rapshrew: Jean Trounstine and the Framingham Women's Prison
Act Five
A Visit with Warden Larry Chandler
Desdemona Speaks: Mike Smith on the Outside
Shakespeare in Solitary: "To Revenge or to Forgive?": Laura Bates'
Hamlet and Othello at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility
Epilogue
A behind the scenes insight into Shakespeare's place in today's society, particularly in major institutions such as the military, prisons and schools.
Amy Scott-Douglass is an
Assistant Professor in the English department at Marymount
University, outside
of Washington, DC. Her scholarship on Shakespeare has appeared in
Shakespeares
after Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia of the Bard in Mass Media and
Popular
Culture, Shakespeare the Movie Part II, The Edinburgh Companion
to Shakespeare and the Arts, and Cambridge World Shakespeare
Encyclopedia.
-Mention. Daily Telegraph/ April 8, 2007
*Daily Telegraph*
[Scott-Douglass] craft(s) a deeply personal, and engrossing account
of the ways in which 'secured Shakespeare programs' confront many
of the same issues that trouble Shakespeare scholars... What makes
these interviews lively to read, rather than a flat series of
transcriptions is Amy's felt presence on the page. I take the
liberty of citing her by first name precisely because she conveys a
persona throughout the study that invites familiarity... She
manages to connect us even with those whose faces she cannot see in
the most chilling isolated maximum-security cellblocks...
Shakespeare Inside offers a compelling story that resists
saccharine platitudes without curtailing empathy.' Scott L.
Newstok, Rhodes College, USA, Review in The Upstart Crow, Summer
2007.
'[this book] is anecdotal rather than analytical, but the scenes
she [Amy Scott-Douglass] describes are richly provocative...Prison,
we discover, is one of the last bastions of unapologetic
bardolatry.' Oliver Harris, TLS, December 2007.
"Scott-Douglass's book is especially powerful because she captures
these prisoners' lives in all of their complexity...Shakespeare
provides beauty; catharsis; empathy for their victims; therapy."
-Studies in English Literature
*Peter G. Platt*
"This is a wonderfully honest book. We really get to meet the
inmates and see how Shakespeare has changed their lives. One
cannot help being deeply moved by a prisoner who says, 'Shakespeare
still lives even though he's dead. His spirit lives on. A lot of
things that he wrote are happening in the world today.' The truth
of this insight, and its special pertinence to those who are in
prison, is borne out again and again in this totally absorbing and
engagingly written book." David Bevington, Departments of English
and Comparative Literature, University of Chicago, editor of
Complete Works of Shakespeare
"The ambitious project of the Shakespeare NOW series is to bridge
the gap between ‘scholarly thinking and a public audience' and
‘public audience and scholarly thinking'. Scholars are encouraged
to write in a way accessible to a general readership and readers to
rise to the challenge and not be afraid of new ideas and the
adventure they offer. There are other bridges the series is
ambitious to cross: ‘formal, political or theoretical boundaries' -
history and philosophy, theory, and performance." English Vol. 58,
2009
"[Shakespeare Now! is] an innovative new series... Series editors
Simon Palfry and Ewan Fernie have rejected the notion of business
as usual in order to pursue a distinctive strategy that aims to put
"cutting-edge scholarship" in front of a broad audience.
Shakespeare Now! with its insistent appeal to the contemporary-
this is fresh Shakespeare for readers turned off by the prospect of
dry-as-dust scholarship-aims to reach a general audience... One of
the most winning aspects of the book [Shakespeare Inside] is its
skillful presentation of testimony, largely drawn from interviews
with the actor-prisoners. Scott-Douglass places herself squarely in
the picture, acknowledging her own strong reactions to what she
discovers in prison and reminding readers that her embodied
presence provoked comments, just as her questions elicited
confidences from the prisoners. In a compelling passage near the
conclusion, Scott-Douglass describes in novelistic detail attending
a parole hearing for one of the actors whose bid for freedom is
denied... Shakespeare Inside offers firsthand reporting on
contemporary Shakespeare that speaks to an enormous range of social
and cultural issues and takes full advantage of the small format's
immediacy. It is a thought-provoking account of the uses to which
Shakespeare is being put outside the confines of the academy and
the privileged performance venues that steadily attract a strange
mixture of enthusiasts and the variously coerced... Shakespeare
Inside is compelling journalism"
*Shakespeare Quarterly*
"Where is Shakespeare now? This question is the brief for a new
series of short books from Continuum, an enterprising publisher
trying to break down the border between academic literary criticism
and books for the thoughtful general reader. Amy Scott-Douglass's
book Shakespeare Inside based on observations and interviews,
reveals how Shakespeare really can change lives." Jonathan Bate,
The Sunday Telegraph
*Sunday Telegraph*
"The author faced her fears, a decision, she says, that resulted in
one of 'the most important and enlightening experiences of [her]
adult life.' Based on observations and interviews, Shakespeare
Inside: The Bard Behind Bars offers a voyeuristic peek inside the
prison theatre program at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex
in La Grange, Kentucky...like an 'adventure story.'" - Text and
Presentation
*Tidings*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
