Introduction

Authors

  • Deanne Williams York University

Abstract

In a short introductory essay, Deanne Williams discusses the emerging field of Girls Studies and the recent publication of books on girls in Shakespeare and the Renaissance. She argues that the process of Shakespeare adaptation often includes and incorporates girlhood, and proposes that girlhood and adaptation share much in common through a traditional perception that dismisses them as secondary and derivative. She also guides readers through this special issue on Girls and Girlhood in Adaptations of Shakespeare, highlighting how each contribution represents girlhood.

 

Author Biography

Deanne Williams, York University

Deanne Williams is Associate Professor of English at York University, Toronto. She is the author of The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cambridge 2004), which won the Roland H. Bainton Prize for best book in literature from the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. She is co-editor, with Ananya Jahanara Kabir, of Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures (Cambridge 2005), and, with Kaara L. Peterson, of The Afterlife of Ophelia (Palgrave 2012). She has published articles on a wide range of topics, including Shakespeare adaptations, the history of feminist scholarship, and the reception of classical and medieval literature in the Renaissance. Her new book, Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood, was published in the Palgrave Shakespeare Studies series in 2014.

Issue Cover text: B&L, Vol. 9, No. 1, 204. Image: Two actresses in an adaptation of the Tempest wade together on a shoreline, hands clasped.

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Published

2014-05-01

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 1 (2014): Girls and Girlhood in Adaptations of Shakespeare

Section

Articles