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"YouTube Shakespeares" is a study of Shakespeare online videos and the people who create, upload, and view them on YouTube. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this work is a remix of theories and methodologies from literary, performance, (social) media, fan, and Internet studies that expands the field of Shakespeare studies. This

"YouTube Shakespeares" is a study of Shakespeare online videos and the people who create, upload, and view them on YouTube. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this work is a remix of theories and methodologies from literary, performance, (social) media, fan, and Internet studies that expands the field of Shakespeare studies. This dissertation explores the role of YouTube users and their activities, the expansion of literary research methods onto digital media venues, YouTube as site of Shakespeare performance, and YouTube Shakespeares' fan communities. It analyzes a broad array of Shakespeare visual performances including professional and user-generated mashups, remixes, film clips, auditions, and high school performances. A rich avenue for the study of people's viewing and reception of Shakespeare, YouTube tests the (un)limitations of Shakespeare adaptation. This work explores the ethical implications of researching performances that include human subjects, arguing that their presence frequently complicates common concepts of public and private identities. Although YouTube is a "published" forum for social interactivity and video repository, this work urges digital humanities scholars to recognize and honor the human users entailed in the videos not as text, but as human subjects. Shifting the study focus to human subjects demands a revision of research methods and publications protocols as the researcher repositions herself into the role of virtual ethnographer. "YouTube Shakespeares" develops its own ethics-based, online research method, which includes seeking Institutional Board Review approval and online interviews. The second half of the dissertation shifts from methodology to theorizing YouTube Shakespeares' performance spaces as analogs to the interactive and imaginary areas of Shakespeare's early modern theatre. Additionally, this work argues that YouTube Shakespeares' creators and commentators are fans. "YouTube Shakespeares" is one of the first Shakespeare-centric studies to employ fan studies as a critical lens to explore the cultural significance and etiquette of people's online Shakespeare performance activities. The work ends with a conversation about the issues of ephemerality, obsolescence, and concerns about the instability of digital and online materials, noting the risk of evidentiary loss of research materials is far outweighed by a scholarly critical registration of YouTube in the genealogy of Shakespeare performance.
ContributorsFazel, Valerie Margaret (Author) / Thompson, Ayanna (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Fox, Cora (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
This dissertation considers why several characters on the Early Modern Stage choose to remain silent when speech seems warranted. By examining the circumstances and effects of self-silencing on both the character and his/her community, I argue that silencing is an exercise of power that simultaneously subjectifies the silent one and

This dissertation considers why several characters on the Early Modern Stage choose to remain silent when speech seems warranted. By examining the circumstances and effects of self-silencing on both the character and his/her community, I argue that silencing is an exercise of power that simultaneously subjectifies the silent one and compels the community (textual or theatrical) to ethical self-examination. This argument engages primarily with social philosophers Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Badiou, and Emmanual Levinas, considering their sometimes contradictory ideas about the ontology and representation of the subject and the construction of community. Set alongside the Early Modern plays of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Thomas Kyd, these theories reveal a rich functionality of self-silencing in the contexts of gender relations, aberrant sociality, and ethical crisis. This multi-faceted functionality creates a singular subject, establishes a space for the simultaneous existence of the subject and his/her community, offers an opportunity for empathetic mirroring and/or insight, and thereby leads to social unification. Silence is, in its effects, creative: it engenders empathy and ethical self- and social-reflection.
ContributorsKrouse, Penelope (Author) / Perry, Curtis (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Ayanna T (Thesis advisor) / Fox, Cora V (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Description
“Digital Shakespeares” is a study of the ways that Shakespearean theaters and festivals are incorporating digital media into their marketing and performance practices at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The project integrates Shakespeare studies, performance studies, and digital media and internet studies to explore how digital media are integral

“Digital Shakespeares” is a study of the ways that Shakespearean theaters and festivals are incorporating digital media into their marketing and performance practices at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The project integrates Shakespeare studies, performance studies, and digital media and internet studies to explore how digital media are integral to the practices of four North American and British Shakespearean performance institutions: the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare’s Globe, and the Stratford (Canada) Festival. Through an analysis of their performance and marketing practices, I argue that digital media present an opportunity to reevaluate concepts of performance and relevance, and explore the implications such reevaluations have on the future of Shakespearean performance. The project addresses institutions’ digital media practices through the lens of four concepts—access, marketing, education, and performance—to conclude that theaters and festivals are finding it necessary to adopt practices from multiple media to stay viable in today’s online attention economy. The first chapter considers the issue of access, exploring the influence of social media on audience-institution interactions as theaters and festivals establish online presences on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Chapter two argues that theaters and festivals incorporate digital media into their outreach through poaching the practices of other media and cultural institutions as they strive to become relevant to their online audiences by appealing through the newness of digital media. Chapter three focuses on two digital educational outreach programs, the Globe’s Playing Shakespeare and the RSC’s Young Shakespeare Nation, to understand how each institution seeks to employ digital media to make their educational audiences life-long lovers of Shakespearean performance. Throughout the final chapter, I analyze potential models for incorporating digital media into Shakespearean performance, both in performances that bring digital media onto the stage and in performances that use social media as the platform for dramatic performance. Ultimately, I argue digital media have become an integral part of the practices Shakespearean performance institutions use to establish and sustain their cultural relevance with modern audiences, while raising questions regarding the implications of those practices in an increasingly globalized world.
ContributorsWay, Geoffrey (Author) / Thompson, Ayanna (Thesis advisor) / Lehmann, Courtney (Committee member) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Fox, Cora (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
“Trauma, Typology, and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern England” explores the connection between the biblical exegetical mode of typology and the construction of traumatic historiography in early modern English anti-Catholicism. The Protestant use of typology—for example, linking Elizabeth to Eve--was a textual expression of political and religious trauma surrounding the English

“Trauma, Typology, and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern England” explores the connection between the biblical exegetical mode of typology and the construction of traumatic historiography in early modern English anti-Catholicism. The Protestant use of typology—for example, linking Elizabeth to Eve--was a textual expression of political and religious trauma surrounding the English Reformation and responded to the threat presented by foreign and domestic Catholicism between 1579 and 1625. During this period of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, English anti-Catholicism began to encompass not only doctrine, but stereotypical representations of Catholics and their desire to overthrow Protestant sovereignty. English Protestant polemicists viewed themselves as taking part in an important hermeneutical process that allowed their readers to understand the role of the past in the present. Viewing English anti-Catholicism through the lens of trauma studies allows us greater insight into the beliefs that underpinned this religio-political rhetoric.

Much of this rhetorical use of typology generated accessible associations of Catholics with both biblical villains and with officials who persecuted and executed Protestants during the reign of Mary I. These associations created a typological network that reinforced the notion of English Protestants as an elect people, while at the same time exploring Protestant religio-political anxiety in the wake of various Catholic plots. Each chapter explores texts published in moments of Catholic “crisis” wherein typology and trauma form a recursive loop by which the parameters of the threat can be understood. The first chapter examines John Stubbs’s Discovery of a Gaping Gulf (1579) and his views of Protestant female monarchy and a sexualized Catholic threat in response to Elizabeth I’s proposed marriage to the French Catholic Duke of Anjou. The second chapter surveys popular and state responses to the first Jesuit mission to England in 1580. The final chapters consider the place of typology and trauma in works by mercantilist Thomas Milles in response to recusant equivocation following the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624) as a response to the failure of marriage negotiations between the Protestant Prince Charles and the Catholic Spanish Infanta.
ContributorsKimbro, Devori (Author) / Hawkes, David (Thesis advisor) / Fox, Cora (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Irish, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015