Recontextualizing Indian Shakespeare Cinema in the West: Familiar Strangers

About the Author Dr Varsha Panjwani teaches at NYU (London, UK). Her work has been published in journals such as Shakespeare Survey; Multicultural Shakespeare;and Shakespeare Studies and in edited collections such as Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas; Shakespeare, Race and Performance; Eating Shakespeare; and Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation (forthcoming).She is one of the principal investigators of the Indian Shakespeares on Screen project in collaboration with the BFI Southbank, Asia House, National Film Archive of India, RHUL, QMUL.Dr. Koel Chatterjee teaches Integrated English at Trinity Laban, UK. Her work has been published in the edited collections Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas and Eating Shakespeare (The Arden Shakespeare, 2019). She is one of the principal investigators of the Indian Shakespeares on Screen project in collaboration with the BFI Southbank, Asia House, National Film Archive of India, RHUL, QMUL.David Schalkwyk is Director of Research at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. and Professor of English at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is editor of Shakespeare Quarterly and his books include Speech and Performance in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays (2002), Literature and the Touch of the Real (2004), Shakespeare, Love and Service (2008).Silvia Bigliazzi is Professor of English at Verona University, Italy, where she specializes in early modern English theatre, with a focus on Shakespeare. She has published two monographs - on Hamlet and on the idea of non-being, besides translations into Italian of a number of Shakespeare's plays, including the Arden edition of Double Falsehood edited by Brean Hammond. Product Description Featuring case studies, essays, and conversation pieces by scholars and practitioners, this volume explores how Indian cinematic adaptations outside the geopolitical and cultural boundaries of India are revitalizing the broader landscape of Shakespeare research, performance, and pedagogy. Essays in this volume address practical and thematic concerns and opportunities that are specific to studying Indian cinematic Shakespeares in the West. For instance, how have intercultural encounters between Indian Shakespeare films and American students inspired new pedagogic methodologies? How has the presence and popularity of Indian Shakespeare films affected policy change at British cultural institutions? How can disagreement between eastern and western perspectives on the politics of a Shakespeare film become the site for productive cross-cultural dialogue? This is the first book to explore such complex interactions between Indian Shakespeare films and Western audiences to contribute to the assessment of the new networks that have emerged as a result of Global Shakespeare studies and practices. The volume argues that by tracking critical currents from India towards the West new insights are afforded on the wider field of Shakespeare Studies - including feminist Shakespeares, translation in Shakespeare, or the study of music in Shakespeare - and are shaping debates on the ownership and meaning of Shakespeare itself. Contributing to the current studies in Global Shakespeare, this book marks a discursive shift in the way Shakespeare on Indian screen is predominantly theorised and offers an alternative methodology for examining non-Anglophone cinematic Shakespeares as a whole.