Daniel Fischlin

Mark Fortier

Shakespeare's plays have been adapted or rewritten in various ways since the 17th century. This anthology brings together 13 theatrical adaptations of Shakespeare's work from around the world and across the centuries.

A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present

Adaptations of Shakespeare

Sixteen leading scholars explore the richness of King James's work from a variety of perspectives, and in so doing seek to establish monarchic writing as an important genre in its own right.

Essays on the Writings of James VI and I

Royal Subjects

Eric Porter

The contributors to Playing for Keeps examine the ways in which musical improvisation can serve as a method for negotiating violence, trauma, systemic inequality, and the aftermaths of war and colonialism. Outlining the relation of improvisatory practices to local and global power structures, they show how in sites as varied as South Africa, Canada, Egypt, the United States, and the Canary Islands, improvisation provides the means for its participants to address the past and imagine the future. In addition to essays, the volume features a poem by saxophonist Matana Roberts, an interview with pianist Vijay Iyer about his work with U.S. veterans of color, and drawings by artist Randy DuBurke that chart Nina Simone's politicization. Throughout, the contributors illustrate how improvisation functions as a model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action that can foster the creation of alternate modes of being and knowing in the world. Contributors. Randy DuBurke, Rana El Kadi, Kevin Fellezs, Daniel Fischlin, Kate Galloway, Reem Abdul Hadi, Vijay Iyer, Mark Lomanno, Moshe Morad, Eric Porter, Sara Ramshaw, Matana Roberts, Darci Sprengel, Paul Stapleton, Odeh Turjman, Stephanie Vos

Improvisation in the Aftermath

Playing for Keeps

Ajay Heble

A fascinating journey into the world of rebel musicians, where music and politics unite.

Human Rights, Resistant Sounds, and the Politics of Music Making

Rebel Musics

Extends the field of improvisation studies in a more global, transcultural direction

Improvisation and Transcultural Difference

Sound Changes

George Lipsitz

The Fierce Urgency of Now offers an impassioned call to take the practices of musical improvisation often associated with jazz performance as a model for social-justice activism.

Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation

The Fierce Urgency of Now

Institute of Policy Alternatives (Montréal, Québec)

Professor Department of English Daniel Fischlin

Martha Nandorfy

Eduardo Galeano--the single most important literary voice to come out of Latin America in the last decades.

Through the Looking Glass

Eduardo Galeano

"PLAYING FOR KEEPS is an edited volume of essays exploring the global dimensions of musical improvisation. The editors are interested in what they call the "aftermaths" associated with improvisational music practices: the various ways musical improvisation can respond in the aftermath of trauma, and the imagined possibilities that lie in the wake of improvisatory performance. The volume is presented as global case studies, each offering an example of how musical improvisation can foster communal responses to the realities of colonialism, imperialism, and war. By turning its attention to the global scale, this volume seeks to complicate the notion, popular within North American contexts, that improvisation necessarily leads to liberation. Instead, the editors seek to situate improvisation within local contexts, and, by examining how improvisational music practices are enmeshed in local and global power structures, point to improvisation as a site of potentiality. The volume is comprised of twelve chapters, with an introduction by the editors. Chapter One, Matana Roberts's poem "manifesto," stages improvisatory practice on the page in the form of a response to the Preamble of the United States Constitution. In chapter 2, Stephanie Vos examines the communal response to the burglary of the Zimology Institute in South Africa-an institute dedicated to educational programs about musical improvisation-which itself took the form of an improvisational music performance. Chapter 4, an interview with jazz musician and composer Vijay Iyer, examines Iyer's collaborative project Holding it Down, a performance of poetry and music that explores the experiences of US veterans of color. This chapter, in particular, complicates notions of improvisation, as Iyer claims that both oppressed people and their oppressors use improvisatory practices to accomplish their respective goals. In Chapter 8 Darci Sprengel documents the use of Tarab, a practice of "deep listening" that dissolves the distinction between self and other, by Mini Mobile Concerts (MMC), an improvisational concert group active in post-Mubarak Egypt. In particular, Sprengel focuses on how the improvisational practices of MMC addressed the topic of sexual assault, thereby renegotiating the gendered public space of the street. Chapter 9, an interview with Reem Abdul Hadi and Odej Turjman of the Al Mada Association for Art-Based Community, examines how Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and Palestine use music improvisation to negotiate the erasure of their land, culture, and identity. Other locations explored in the volume include Afro/Canarian jazz in the Canary Islands; indigenous music practices in Canada; jazz and civil rights in the United States; and popular music in Israel. This volume will be of interest to scholars of jazz, music studies, performance theory, and cultural studies, as well as colonial and postcolonial studies"--

For Shakespeare and Shakespearean adaptation, the global digital media environment is a brave new world of opportunity and revolution. InOuterSpeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation, noted scholars of Shakespeare and new media consider the ways in which various media affect how we understand Shakespeare and his works. Daniel Fischlin and his collaborators explore a wide selection of adaptations that occupy the space between and across traditional genres  what artist Dick Higgins calls intermedia  ranging from adaptations that use social networking, cloud computing, and mobile devices to the many handicrafts branded and sold in connection with the Bard. With essays on YouTube and iTunes, as well as radio, television, and film, OuterSpeares is the first book to examine the full spectrum of past and present adaptations, and one that offers a unique perspective on the transcultural and transdisciplinary aspects of Shakespeare in the contemporary world.

Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation

OuterSpeares

William Shakespeare

Sky Gilbert

Jill L. Levenson

Overpowering adolescent passion at odds with a troubled adult world: this ancient tale was never more grippingly told than Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, where two youths come together in a love that is both transformative and death-marked. The society around them lacks flexibility, failing to govern this destabilizing energy.

Shakespeare scholar Jill L. Levenson-whose work on this play has opened new readings of Romeo and Juliet internationally-shows how the play's treatment of gender, class, sexuality, and political fragmentation has found rich resonance in Canada. There are a variety of surprisingly creative adaptations not just in French and English but also, for example, in French and Attikamek. From ballet to Ann-Marie MacDonald's award-winning play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), Romeo and Juliet remains a compelling exploration of passion and violence.
--back cover

Daniel Fischlin

Books

Your next favorite book is out there