Race, Trans, and Early Modern Studies: Questions of Agency, Folger Library

How do we bring critical race theory and transgender theory together, through an ethics of care, to examine adaptations of Shakespeare and contemporary understanding of early modernity? Why are performance studies methods important in the study of race and gender? What are the benefits of thinking about body-mind diversity temporally?
Drawing on her recent work, such as "Trans Studies at the Crossroad: From Racialized Invisibility to Gendered Legibility" (Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race), Alexa Alice Joubin gave a lecture on March 15, 2024, in the Folger Institute colloquium on Intersectional Lives in Early Modernity, directed by Bernadette Andrea (former president of the Shakespeare Association of America).
Joubin's 20-minute presentation was followed by a lively hour-long discussion of wide-ranging topics, including:
- stage violence
- historiography and critical fabulation
- archival silence and archival violence
- compulsory realpolitik (biases in scholarship on non-White artworks)
- transgender studies in global contexts
- inclusive pedagogy (teaching She's the Man and Twelfth Night)
- disability studies
- theory of performativity
- thick description as method
- the craft of academic writing.
Premodern critical race studies have broadened our understanding of embodied identities, but the field privileges narrative texts. Joubin uses global and performance studies methods to correct this problem. Trans* and performance theories capture transformative cultural practices. Racism and transmisogyny deny people’s access to public spaces, and public performance has been seen as a way to reclaim inclusive social spaces, even though it is a winding path. Joubin finds "transness" in all representational practices of race and gender.
Racism and (cisgender / able-bodied) sexism draw on the same scripts and ideologies. Joubin argues that race and gender are social practices that evolve over time, in each other’s presence, and in inter-connected social spaces.
Race and trans studies are fields of study borne out of necessity, the necessity to understand the world, and the necessity for all to live a liveable life.
Read Joubin's chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, edited by Patricia Akhimie (2024), global.oup.com/academic/produ...
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00:00:09 Introduction of Joubin
00:01:00 Overview
00:01:17 Two problems of racism and sexism
00:06:32 Two solutions
00:08:25 Two goals (theory of performativity)
00:12:10 Two study questions
00:15:30 Case studies for critical trans* race theory application
00:18:45 Macbeth through a trans lens
00:19:11 Twelfth Night through a trans lens
00:20:57 Cisgender sexism
00:21:57 Global Shakespeare as heterotopia
00:24:40 Q&A: How does trans performance problematize stage violence?
00:30:41 Q&A: Ethics of care and archival silence
00:33:24 Q&A: Epistemic justice through citation; Aristotle
00:37:02 Q&A: Critical fabulation and explanatory comma
00:42:04 Q&A: Compulsory realpolitik and radical listening (do works have to have political meanings?)
00:49:55 Q&A: Julius Caesar vs Trump
00:50:59 Q&A: Diversity work in the theatre industry; social justice quotient
00:53:51 Q&A: Adaptation / transgender studies in global / postcolonial contexts
00:59:00 Q&A: How to teach She's the Man and Twelfth Night (bell hooks' oppositional gaze)
01:06:56 Q&A: Temporality in disability, race, trans studies
01:13:33 Q&A: Violence of label and archival violence
01:23:41 Q&A: Thick description as method
01:26:11 Q&A: What are your writing processes?