Prof. Adnan Husain enjoys a wonderful conversation with Prof. Ambereen Dadhabhoy (@DrDadabhoy) about her fascinating book Shakespeare Through Islamic Worlds (2024). The book examines the paradoxical importance of Islam and Muslims to Shakespeare’s plays despite the scant or ambiguous mentions in the text. Through contextual examination of the Early Modern Mediterranean as a space of encounter with Islam and Muslims, themes very important to contemporary English theatre, Dr. Dadhabhoy investigates the significance of Shakespeare’s framing of a White, Christian Mediterranean. The conversation talks about history, geography, religion, race, Orientalism and the mobilizing of difference to set the boundaries and anxieties of Shakespeare’s dramatic corpus and its construction as the epitome of “universalist” literary genius in the English language.
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