Alexa Alice Joubin

George Washington University | GW · Department of English

"Race" offers a compelling study of ideas related to race throughout history. Its breadth of coverage, both geographically and temporally, provides readers with an expansive, global understanding of the term from the classical period onwards: Intersections of Race and Gender // Race and Social Theory Identity // Ethnicity, and Immigration // Whiten...

Many screen and stage adaptations of the classics are informed by a philosophical investment in literature's reparative merit, a preconceived notion that performing the canon can make one a better person. Inspirational narratives, in particular, have instrumentalized the canon to serve socially reparative purposes. Social recuperation of disabled f...

Four themes distinguish post-1950s East Asian cinemas and theaters from works in other parts of the world: Japanese innovations in sound and spectacle; Sinophone uses of Shakespeare for social reparation; the reception of South Korean presentations of gender identities in film and touring productions; and multilingual, disability, and racial discou...

Analyzing trans narratives about the early moderns through the lenses of affective labor and social reparation, this chapter reclaims as trans the Shakespeare films that have been misinterpreted as homosexual. In doing so, this chapter builds a longer, more intersectional history of gendered embodiment. Reparative trans performances—works in which...

Co-authored by Alexa Alice Joubin and Lisa S. Starks, this article examines new theories and praxis of listening for silenced voices and of telling compelling stories that make us human. Elucidation of our Levinas-inspired theories of the Other is followed by a discussion of classroom practices for in-person and remote instruction that foster colla...

Queer performance as a genre is both complex and challenging to track, especially in the throes of political oppression. Why should people who do not identify as queer care about queer performance? Trans-identified dancer Jin Xing has this to say: "As long as we live together in a society, people can always find excuses to discriminate against each...

Alexa Alice Joubin, co-director of the Digital Humanities Institute, said she started using AI tools in her classroom in 2021 to help students with their writing assignments and design research questions. She said regenerative AI — which responds to changing situations — is often subject to “hype” in the media and academics that makes it seem capab...

Outputs by AI (such as ChatGPT) are a form of theatrical performance. Alexa Alice Joubin (co-founder of the Digital Humanities Institute at George Washington University) brings performance studies theories to the study of AI. It is crucial to recognize and unpack how generative AI tools are changing the publics’ relationship to themselves. Professo...

This book traces “waves of migration” of people and of Shakespeare’s texts Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Covering a larger swath of continental Europe, case studies in Migrating Shakespeare cohere around the idea of cultural assimilation and map the influence of trade and travel on textual migrations. Positivist and antithetic...

Agreat deal of analysis goes into a play before the acting begins. In this exclusive seminar, Professor Alexa Alice Joubin from George Washington University and Professor Jyotsna Singh from Michigan State University will explore dramatic theory to dramaturgy and how the vital aspects of Shakespeare’s texts are brought to life through a play’s produ...

Alexa Alice Joubin on Shakespearean Dramaturgy at Canada's Stratford Festival as part of the CBC Ideas Week, the Meighen Forum, and the new Forum Academy Series. • contrasts eighteenth-century and twenty-first-century notions of dramaturgy ::: • explains the critical concepts of speech acts and performativity which is the core of dramaturgy :::...

Good afternoon! We’ve assembled a pair of Shakespeare scholars, a stage director and two actors to discuss the question of the progress in getting Shakespeare from the page to the stage: from the meaning of what’s on the page — what the head understands to the types of meaning we can get in performance — what the heart understands. Featured in thi...

From Hamlet performed in colonial Indonesia in 1619, to the difficulties of translating it into Japanese, which has no obvious equivalent of "to be," Shakespeare’s worldwide transmission in theatre, film, translation, and criticism across four centuries combines imperialism, globalization, and cultural hybridity. Alexa Alice Joubin (author of Shake...

Alexa Alice Joubin’s entry expands the global scope of The Chaucer Encyclopedia (4 vols). This entry, in Volume 3, examines the work by the Chinese translator Lin Shu’s (1852-1924). Lin translated and rewrote several key stories from the Canterbury Tales. Joubin argues that Lin’s works exemplify early twentieth-century Chinese imaginaries of mediev...

Despite its prominence in the dramatic canon, King Lear occupies a peculiar position in stage and screen histories. Throughout the centuries, some Anglophone critics and directors have repeatedly declared the play unstageable due to its cruel and nihilistic vision. However, the tragedy holds an important place in non-Anglophone cinema and theater w...

King Lear has an unusual performance history. It was significantly revised, by Shakespeare or others, between its first two publications and was then succeeded by an adaptation that softened the ending so that Lear and Cordelia survived. In our own times it is performed around the world in productions that explore its relevance to contemporary poli...

The circulation of diverse forms of Shakespearean criticism may not be immediately obvious due to the diffuse nature of disseminating ideas on varied but connected cultural terrains. There are no singular, unitary centers and peripheries in the international circulation of Shakespeare criticism. Therefore, encountering intercultural Shakespeare cr...

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are leaving educators anxious about the relevance of assignment submissions. But alarmism about technology will eventually disconnect teachers from the student generation. There is a third route, the proactive mode: think of innovative ways in which AI can be used to enrich and strengthen student skills. Winner of...

Criticism of the Shakespearean canon through adaptation as a genre has the capacity for liberation and social reparation. As a cluster of complex texts that sustains both past practices and contemporary interpretive conventions, Shakespeare provides fertile ground for training students to listen intently and compassionately to other individuals’ vo...

Stage and screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays raise ethical questions – that is, questions about how human beings should act and treat one another. In which contexts might cross-cultural enterprises be naturalising the values associated with Shakespeare to exploit unequal power relations among artists of different backgrounds? Conversely, to...

In this webinar, Fulbright Alumni Ambassador Alexa Alice Joubin (Professor of English at George Washington University) shares her insights on inclusive pedagogy, digital humanities, and incorporating generative AI tools such as ChatGPT in higher education classrooms. Her pedagogical principle has always been to teach with, rather than against, tech...

Alexa Alice Joubin received the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award, which recognizes Professor Joubin’s “contributions to social justice and inclusive excellence ” that exemplify “the ideals that Dr. King espoused,” particularly “community-based social justice organizing rooted in non-violence.” The MLK Award comes on the heel of her bell hooks...

When: Friday, April 14, 10am to 4:30 pm. In-person event. :::: Where: University Student Center 309 (800 21st St. NW) :::: Generative Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) tools have the potential to alter profoundly the ways we work, create, think, and behave. They raise such questions as: What makes humans distinctive? Can machines have consciousness? W...

Open Education Resources (OER) for higher education have made significant progress over the last few decades and peer- reviewed textbooks and instructional material are now routinely and successfully used by instructors. Join the Washington Research Library Consortium Textbook Affordability Working Group for a brief introduction to open textbooks a...

Alexa Alice Joubin, author of the open-access Screening Shakespeare, https://screenshakespeare.org/, will share how she created the textbook. Open Education Resources (OER) for higher education have made significant progress over the last few decades. Textbook affordability continues to be a serious concern for our students. The event is hosted by...

When ChatGPT was launched, Alexa Alice Joubin realized it was here to stay. She views it as her responsibility to teach students how to use it responsibly, not as a shortcut. “This technology is going to be with us, and students need employable skills in terms of curation, editorial repackaging and prompt engineering,” Joubin said. “They need to be...

Alexa Alice Joubin was named the inaugural recipient of the bell hooks Legacy Award on April 7, 2023. The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association (PCA / ACA) established the award to commemorate the late feminist writer and activist bell hooks (1952-2021) who has authored more than 30 books. The award recognizes Joubin’s achiev...

Alexa Alice Joubin was named the inaugural recipient of the bell hooks Legacy Award on April 7, 2023. The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association (PCA / ACA) established the award to commemorate the late feminist writer and activist bell hooks (1952-2021) who has authored more than 30 books. The award recognizes Joubin’s achie...

All the world’s a stage, but the irony is the rest of the globe often has an easier time understanding William Shakespeare than English speakers. “English audiences are at a disadvantage because the language has evolved and is more and more distant. They need footnotes, props and staging to understand,” said Alexa Alice Joubin, a Shakespeare schola...

This special issue on contemporary performance proposes "trans" as method and as a social practice rather than as an immutable identity category that stands in opposition to more established ones such as cis-gender men or cisgender women. We ask new questions about Shakespearean performance: How might the meanings of the plays change if we consider...

Cross-gender roles and performances permeate many of Shakespeare’s plays. This special issue on contemporary transgender performance of Shakespeare was published by the open-access journal dedicated to Shakespeare and appropriation, Borrowers and Lenders, and edited by Alexa Alice Joubin. She shows that these cross-gender acts have been misundersto...

Gender is a set of interpersonal relationships and social practices that evolve in the presence of other people , in social spaces, and over time. My theory of trans lens corrects the institutionalized cis-sexism that assumes the cis status of even those characters with fluid gender practices. It does so by questioning the purported neutrality of c...

This interview with non-binary actor Jess Chanliau, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin, explores genderplay onstage. A bilingual actor, Chanliau has played Viola, "an intrinsically trans character" in Twelfth Night and a queer Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. They spoke candidly on their experience of either being toke-nized or being cast frequently as c...

This interview with King Sammy Silver, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin and Terri Power, explores drag as a stage practice. A London-based actor and YouTube personality, he represents a new generation of trans artists. He has worked with Power on multiple Shakespeare productions at Bath Spa University in the UK and elsewhere, and has been influenced...

This interview with Terri Power, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin, focuses on the representations of trans masculinity in Power's play Drag King Richard III. For nearly two decades Power has been at the forefront of trans and queer representation in performances of Shakespeare. Weaving a personal story of the 1990s with Shakespeare’s early modern di...

Cultural appropriation can be an exploitative act but need not be; it all depends on what users do with Shakespeare. Due to the unequal status of the parties engaged in appropriative exchange, some appropriations deploy Shakespeare to protect conventional power structures. Appropriations are rarely negotiated on a level playing field, especially wh...

This interview with Dr. Mary Ann Saunders, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin, offers a new interpretation of Julie Taymor's 2010 film The Tempest. Bringing her life experience to bear on cisgender biases in non-trans artists' works, Saunders proposes a new interpretation of Ariel, as performed by Ben Whishaw, as a trans woman who is "both beautiful a...

Participants in this interactive session will learn ways to talk about disability and transgender life with sensitivity and respect, why "visibility" is not always empowering or desirable for trans individuals and for people with disability. We will learn about the key issues with today’s vocabulary about disability and transgender practices. Throu...

What is gender? How do we maintain a safe space for trans visibility? Further, why is trans visibility not always empowering or desirable? In this interactive session, we will learn about the key issues with today’s vocabulary about gender as well as a quick history of representations of transgender individuals in popular media. Through copious fil...

Like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Shakespeare’s Sonnets challenge the binaries between gender and between the vernacular and the literary. Translators take up this challenge and turn it into an opportunity for humanist interpretations of literature, as in the case of Taiwanese essayist Liang Shiqiu’s (1903–1987) translation. Widely known in the Sinoph...

Cooperative learning as a pedagogical method effectively reflects the communal character of the performing arts. By creating knowledge about Shakespearean performance collaboratively, students and educators lay claim to the ethics and ownership of that knowledge, an act that is particularly urgent and meaningful in the age of COVID-19 when we need...

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has exacerbated anti-Asian racism— the demonization of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as viral origins — in the United States. Offering strategies for inclusion and for identifying tacit forms of misogynistic racism, this presentation analyzes the manifestation of the ideas of yellow peril and ye...

Shakespeare’s plays feature translational properties that can be amplified in translation. This translingual property makes Shakespeare’s text inherently translational in the dramaturgical and gestural senses. A frequently stated myth is that Shakespearean drama is all about its poetic language, and adaptations in another language would violate the...

Literary translations work with, rather than out of, the space between languages. Translations evolve not only across linguistic and cultural borders but also across time. It is notable that Shakespeare’s own play texts feature translational properties that can be amplified in translation. This translingual property makes Shakespeare’s text inheren...

What is the role of artworks that depict the idea of uselessness or that are deemed decadent? In China, according to Calvin Hui, such works shape the identity, desire, and subjectivity of the middle class. One is what one consumes, it seems. By listening to, for example, Teresa Teng’s (Deng Lijun) songs, one becomes part of the new petty bourgeoisi...

This is an excerpt of an interview with Alexa Alice Joubin about her intellectual journey, the idea of "foreignness," and her perspective on invisible and visible racial identities. Also discussed in the interview are her recent books, Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford University Press) and Race (Routledge). She examines Shakespearean adaptation ac...

Alexa Alice Joubin was recently interviewed by GW Today on the opportunities and danger that AI may present in higher education. In a recent panel discussion, Joubin noted that ChatGPT can "encourage mistaking synthesis for critical thinking", but also "encourage students to apply high-level editorial and curatorial skills" to generated material. :...

Advances in Artificial Intelligence, such as ChatGPT, brought GW faculty together for the first of many planned looks at the challenges—and opportunities. ::: Alexa Alice Joubin Joubin sees both danger and opportunity in the new software — one of the dangers being the way ChatGPT can encourage mistaking synthesis for critical thinking. On the plus...

Slide deck available below (scroll down) ::: Join colleagues from across George Washington University to learn more about how recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (such as, chatGPT) are now being used in university classrooms, labs, and offices. :::::: Speakers: Alexa Alice Joubin (Digital Humanities Institute), Katr...

Alexa Alice Joubin said she is “excited” by Granberg’s academic and professional background in the social sciences and hopes Granberg’s leadership will lead to more support for social sciences and humanities departments. “I’m hoping that the University leadership would begin to understand the value of the humanities and render appropriate support a...

Alexa Alice Joubin said she has “embraced” AI in the classroom and taught students “prompt engineering,” a way of designing the most suitable prompt to provide the most ideal answer with ChatGPT to build on skills like designing research questions. “AI is no different than when the calculator was first invented,” she said. “It was disruptive, but i...

In Alexa Alice Joubin's book’s ample engagement with other scholars and current theories of adaptation, it is the very model of synthetic work. The tone is accessible, the scholarship up-to-date, the materials kaleidoscopic, the ideas clearly articulated. Her presentation is for the most part admirably linear and lucid. The sign-postings start with...

The screen as an interface immerses audiences in an alternate universe. As a result, that interface seems transparent. Through analyses of performances that call attention to filmic genres, such as Edgar Wright’s parody film, Hot Fuzz (2007), and the Wooster Group’s multimedia production, Hamlet (2007), as well as (meta)theatrical operations on sma...

The metatheatricality of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has invited recent directors to tell particular kinds of socially progressive stories. This article uses the notion of “social reparation” to theorize remedial uses of Shakespeare in adaptations that give artists and audiences more moral agency. By imagining more inclusive local habitations and soc...

This is a review of Alexa Alice Joubin and Peter S. Donaldson's MIT Global Shakespeares. In 2022, Professor Amrita Sen writes that the MIT Global Shakespeares “opens up new possibilities of community building through its curatorial strategies and social outreach. It not only acts as repositories of actual performances, but also functions as archive...

The rise of global Shakespeare as an industry and cultural practice—the incorporation of Shakespearean performance in cultural diplomacy and in the cultural marketplace—is aided by digital tools of dissemination and digital forms of artistic expression. Shakespeare has evolved from a cultural nomad in the past centuries—a body of works with no perm...

Screening Shakespeare by Alexa Alice Joubin covers four key aspects of filmmaking: mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound and music, and film theory. It draws on film adaptations of Shakespeare as case studies to explain these concepts, beginning with formal and cultural analysis of film as a medium. :::: https://screenshakespeare.org/ Supported by...

The Trachtenberg award recognizes outstanding research accomplishments. It was established by George Washington University President Emeritus Stephen Joel Trachtenberg in memory of his parents. It is presented annually to a faculty. The award is meant to honor faculty scholarship and demonstrate the University’s commitment to research and creative...

NexStar TV interviewed Alexa Alice Joubin for ABC-8 News on a new quarter coin. Asian American actress Anna May Wong will be featured on the quarter as part of a new series focused on celebrating important women in U.S. history. George Washington University Professor Alexa Alice Joubin is excited about the new coins: “Having this symbol of U.S. co...

This panel will show the myriad ways institutions have benefited from supporting faculty to teach abroad though a brief overview of survey data and a presentation by a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar alumna, Alexa Alice Joubin. ::::: While many institutions actively encourage faculty to pursue international research opportunities, there is a growi...

On the occasion of the premiere of Thomas Ostermeier’s Le roi Lear at Comedie Française in Paris (September 2022-February 2023), Agence France-Presse interviewed Alexa Alice Joubin on a topic pertaining to global Shakespeare. All the world’s a stage but the irony is the rest of the globe often has an easier time understanding William Shakespeare t...

There are multiple ways to facilitate inclusion regardless of whether it’s online or in person. Alexa Alice Joubin will discuss her usage of contract grading, collaborative annotation using the Perusall social learning platform, and her open-access online textbook, Screening Shakespeare, an open educational resource (OER), in her classes. :::: http...

There are multiple ways to facilitate inclusion regardless of whether it’s online or in person. Alexa Alice Joubin will discuss her usage of contract grading, collaborative annotation using the Perusall social learning platform, and her open-access online textbook, Screening Shakespeare, an open educational resource (OER), in her classes. Alexa us...

As a single-authored monograph, Shakespeare and East Asia presents a clear agenda of resisting national allegory approaches in favor of rhizomatic readings, which can highlight connections and cross-fertilization among Asian and Western Shakespeare works in intercultural, intracultural, and intermedial ways. :::: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/...

The depiction of Asian women in science fiction films reveals how racial hierarchies are mapped onto, and used as justification for, mistreatment of women—and misogynistic prejudices inform racism. Contributing to the patterns that dehumanize Asian women are multiple sci-fi films that feature cyborgs and androids in Asian female bodies. ::::: The r...

The WoW Talks at George Washington University are 10-minute TED style presentations that offer snapshots of faculty’s latest research. In her talk, Professor Joubin will examine why gender has become the latest battle ground for culture wars. Anti-feminist, white nationalist, (trans)misogynist, anti-immigrant, and homophobic movements use “genderis...

“In the morning, Deng Xiaoping rules; in the evening, Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun) rules,” went a popular saying in China during the 1980s. The late Chinese leader and Taiwanese singer are ideologically opposed and have nothing in common except for their investment in social change through (pop) culture. Analyzing the stark contrast between the two Den...

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has exacerbated anti-Asian racism— the demonization of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as viral origins— in the United States. :::: Working from an archive of recent North American screen works that implicitly and explicitly dramatize, or critique, misogynist racism, this illustrated, interactiv...

This NEH summer institute is designed to help high school teachers integrate adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays into their curricula, with an emphasis on Hamlet and Othello. Participants will study a variety of adaptations, including films, video games, graphic novels, stage performances, music, and young adult novels. We will emphasize diversity t...

Even though Shakespeare’s plays were initially performed by all-male casts, they were designed to appeal to diverse audiences. Many modern adaptations reimagine those plays as expressions of gender nonconformity. Over the past decades, prominent films and theater works have fostered new public conversations about the politics of appropriating gende...

Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear, three of the most frequently adapted tragedies, have inspired incredible work in the Sinophone theatres of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China for over two centuries as political theatre, comedic parody, Chinese opera, and avant-garde theatre. Gender roles in the plays take on new meanings when they are embodi...

Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear stand out as the most frequently and creatively adapted tragedies in more than two centuries of Sinophone performances of Western classics. Between 1987 (when Deng Xiaoping reaffirmed “socialist market economy” as the guiding principle of China’s development and when Taiwan’s martial law was lifted) and 2007 (when the...

Shakespeare adaptations share an intimate relation with global studies, because Shakespeare – as a cultural institution – registers a broad spectrum of practices that generate productive dialogues with world cultures. Global studies enables us to examine deceivingly harmonious images of Shakespeare’s works. This paper examines culturally fluid, con...

This chapter features a world-renowned solo jingju performance by Taiwanese actor Wu Hsing-kuo with Buddhist inflections. The first innovation is Wu’s tour-de-force performance of ten characters: Li Er in the first act, the Fool, a Dog, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, Earl of Gloucester, Edmund, and Edgar in the second act, and himself (Wu Hsing-kuo the...

The Taiwanese Hamlet featured in this chapter provides meaningful contrasts to Lin’s Hamlet in the previous chapter. Whereas Lin’s adaptation suggests that in his postsocialist society, everyone is a morally coward Hamlet, Taiwanese playwright Lee Kuo-hsiu uses Shakespeare’s tragedy as a pretext in his metatheatrical play, Shamlet (1992). Set in po...

With few subplots, Macbeth lends itself to adaptations in musical genres that prioritize singing and dancing over speeches. Even though most Sinophone theatre practitioners and critics believed that only huaju in Mandarin—a form with closer affinity to the Western naturalistic theater—was a more effective medium for performing Shakespeare, the well...

King Lear has held a special place in Sinophone theatre partly because of its compelling themes of generational gap and filial piety. Shanghai Beijing Opera Company’s 1995 King Qi’s Dream presents the tragedy as a moralizing story from a fictional pre-modern China. Opening with King Qi’s birthday celebration and closing with a scene of “rebirth” of...

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has exacerbated anti-Asian racism—the demonization of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as viral origins—in the United States. Offering strategies for inclusion and for identifying tacit forms of misogynistic racism, this article analyzes the manifestation of the ideas of yellow peril and yellow fev...

“Live” performances used to be distinguished from multiplex film—a more editorialized medium—by their cachet of being “ephemeral” and irrecoverable. These distinctions are going away, because more and more theatrical and filmic performances are mediated by the screen interfaces, especially since the onset of the global pandemic of COVID-19. Interfa...

The social justice turn in the arts may have become more visible during the pandemic, but it has been a key ingredient in world cinema and theatre. Even before these global crises, anti-feminist, white nationalist, transmisogynist, and anti-immigrant movements have used the ideas of otherness to evoke a range of disruptive identities and to attack...

Shakespeare’s plays and motifs have been appropriated in fragmentary forms on screen since motion pictures were invented in 1893. Allusions to Shakespeare haunt our contemporary culture in a myriad of ways, whether through brief references or sustained intertextual engagements. ::::: This collection of essays extends beyond a US-UK axis to bring to...

Shakespeare’s plays and motifs have been appropriated in fragmentary forms on screen since motion pictures were invented in 1893. Allusions to Shakespeare haunt our contemporary culture in a myriad of ways, whether through brief references or sustained intertextual engagements. ::::: This collection of essays extends beyond a US-UK axis to bring...

Join us to explore Fulbright opportunities in the humanities and social sciences. The event features Alexa Alice Joubin and Lisa Pinley Covert, and is hosted by Jaclyn Assarian. Register at https://apply.iie.org/portal/scholar_webinars :::: Topics covered: Overview of the Fulbright US Scholar program; Fulbright alumni experiences; how Fulbright sch...

How do actors reposition their racialized and gendered bodies? Why is Asianness invisible in global film culture? Join us for this illustrated presentation on representations of race, gender, and East Asia on film and television. ::::: The global pandemic of COVID-19 has exacerbated anti-Asian racism, but we can enhance our strategies for inclusi...

Join us for a session on the Fulbright Scholar Program. Fulbright awards are available for teaching and research and can serve as a wonderful faculty development opportunity. There are over 400 unique opportunities available in over 135 countries awarded to over 800 scholars annually. The competition for 2023-24 awards is now open, so this is an id...

Transgender performances of Shakespeare on film raise new questions about the long history of associating trans bodies with flawed bodies in distress, such as: Why were marginalized social practices (such as gender expression) used as metaphors for illness? This paper uses what I call the trans lens to analyze Richard Eyre's Othello-inspired film S...

Recently, anti-feminist, white nationalist, (trans)misogynist, anti-immigrant, and homophobic movements have used “genderism” to evoke a range of disruptive identities and to attack legal and social human rights. This conversation, featuring Alexa Alice Joubin (https://ajoubin.org/), will explore how transgender studies can combat intersectional fo...

Discussant: Alexa Alice Joubin ::::: Critical race, feminist and queer scholars have long been working to lay bare the violence embedded in the field of early modern studies. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and the acute rupture in the summer of the long-festering chronic health crisis of racial violence against Black Americans and systemic xenophob...

Much of the public discourse on China relates largely to the country's expanding economic and military power. The result can be that regular Americans and policymakers alike ignore the diverse arts that flourish in or come from China. :::: In this roundtable discussion, scholars Alexa Alice Joubin, professor at the George Washington University and...

TOMODACHI MetLife Women's Leadership Program was launched in 2013 in partnership with the TOMODACHI Initiative and MetLife Japan. It aims to develop the next generation of globally active women leaders. :::: Over a ten-month period, the program provides highly motivated Japanese female university students with training sessions to hone their leade...

Situated in the flourishing research field of Shakespeare in Asia, this book sheds new light on films and stage adaptations of Shakespeare, some of which are unknown or unfamiliar, and, most significantly, it reveals deep structural and narratological connections among Asian and anglophone performances. A strength of the book comes from its theoret...

A regional methodology with a transnational framework can identify shared and conflicting patterns of cultural dissemination. Regional data is widely available but difficult to classify, and this book has organized and synthesized important sectors of Nordic histories to serve as a key method ‘for disrupting nationalist and globalist paradigms’, ac...

How do actors reposition their racialized bodies on stage and on screen? How do Sinophone cinema and feminism transform gender identities in Shakespeare? Bringing film and theatre studies together, this illustrated presentation sheds new light on the two major genres in a comparative context in the Sinophone world. Shakespeare’s tragedies have insp...

This new adaptation, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, of the late medieval morality play Everyman, one of the first recorded plays in the English language, explores the meaning of life and the roles we play along the way. The performers randomly draw lots live on stage each night to determine which actor will play which part in that evening’s performance...

Alexa Alice Joubin is a professor of English, women's, gender and sexuality studies, theatre, international affairs, and East Asian languages and literatures. She co-founded and currently co-directs the GW Digital Humanities Institute. An award-winning researcher and writer, she is an expert on race and gender in film and theatre, particularly glob...

Shakespeare’s plays enjoy a great deal of popularity across the world, yet most of us study Shakespeare’s local productions. Alexa Alice Joubin‘s Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford 2021) addresses this gap through a wide-ranging analysis of stage and film adaptations related to Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US a...

Friday January 28, 2022 at 5 pm Central European time on Zoom. Asian performance aesthetics have a symbiotic but uncomfortable relationship to Western epistemologies. This paper addresses the role of the Western canon, represented by Shakespeare, in East Asian cinema. Drawing on case studies of Japanese, Korean, and Hong Kong adaptations of Shakesp...

Alexa Alice Joubin is the author of the recently published book Shakespeare in East Asia (Oxford University Press, 2021), which raises such intriguing questions as: How did Kurosawa influence George Lucas’ Star Wars? Why do critics repeatedly use the adjective Shakespearean to describe Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019)? How do East Asian cinema and th...

Panelists discuss how they “own” the global cultural artifact we call Shakespeare from different interdisciplinary perspectives—and from different positions within the profession (contingent faculty members, librarians and digital curators, tenured distinguished chairs, tenured instructional faculty members, minoritized faculty members). ::: https:...

There is no Shakespeare without text. Yet readers often do not realize that the words in the book they hold, like the dialogue they hear from the stage, has been revised, augmented and emended since Shakespeare’s lifetime. An essential resource for the history of Shakespeare on the page, Shakespeare and Textual Theory traces the explanatory underpi...