Introduction

Authors

Alexa Huang Pennsylvania State University

Abstract

Cluster: Asian Shakespeares on Screen: Two Films in Perspective

Edited by Alexa Huang

The introduction to this collection of multimedia essays on Maqbool and The Banquet argues that close examination of the films through a truly global array of appropriative strategies and cultural contexts can help combat the tendency to report on rather than analyze non-Western works and thus can also prevent Asian films from being seen as merely exotic and disconnected from Shakespeare scholarship. Especially valuable for Shakespeareans are the ways in which the two films refashion Hamlet, Gertrude, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and other characters to shed new light on the visceral and political experiences enabled by these Shakespearean tragedies.

Author Biography

Alexa Huang, Pennsylvania State University

Alexa Huang is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University and Research Affiliate in Literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (Columbia University Press, 2009), co-editor of Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia, and Cyberspace (Purdue University Press, 2009), co-editor of Class, Boundary, and Social Discourse in the Renaissance (2007), co-editor of Shakespeare Performance in Asia (SPiA), and video curator for "Imagining China," an exhibition at Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. (Sept. 2009-Jan. 2010). She has contributed to MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, Shakespeare Bulletin, The Shakespearean International Yearbook, Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare, Theatre Journal, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance, The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance, and other journals and books.