Browse Exhibits (8 total)

Othello's Interracial Love and the Views of Shakespearean Society

The stigma behind interracial relationships is as old as relationships themselves. This exhibit explores the ideas behind the stigma and how it was developed due to ignorance and societal norms. The object of this exhibit is William Shakespeare’s play, Othello, a tragedy of an African general’s love with a Venetian woman that is destroyed by the jealously as manipulation of his inferior officer. This play gives us an insight into the taboo of interracial relationships in the 17th century. The evidence behind this insight is found in the pages of rare books created by renown scholars that were available to educate Shakespeare during the creation of his work and the rest of the population during the time period. Specific topics include the science behind skin color, the fable, Washing the Ethiopian White, and enslavement of the mind and body. Each topic is relevant to 17th century society, and creates a vision of how and why this stigma was created and practiced among populations. In today’s society, people are becoming more aware of the ignorance behind this taboo, and moving forward to accept love between people of different races, sexes, and social classes. This exhibit serves as a portrayal of how this stigma was born in the idea of ignorance, and through education of the science behind variations in skin color, people can become aware of the equality of emotional happiness that was all should share with our significant other, regardless of their race.

Contemporary Views of Race and Skin Color Surrounding 'Othello'

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              Othello is, at its core, a story that has a lot to do with race.  The racial perceptions of this play in some ways appear to be quite mixed; on the one hand, Othello’s very existence as a complex Shakespearean hero presents a different view of the black man than was popular in those times, but on the other hand Othello’s tragic end returns him to the very violence of racial stereotypes.  In this exhibit, I present various depictions of race and skin color that were available at the time Shakespeare wrote Othello.  The exhibit is comprised of two parts: one examining depictions of skin color in general, and one examining how climate was believed to affect race.

Neither Man nor Beast

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The title of my exhibit is “Neither Man nor Beast” due to its exploration of the European views of “the other” as both man and monster, and the role that these views play in William Shakespeare’s Othello.

            Within the play, it is made clear that Othello is shown a significantly lower amount of respect due to the color of his skin and his country of origin. However, in addition, comparisons are made to suggest that Moor is synonymous with animal. Othello is referred to, through the use of figurative language, as an animal such as a ram or a dog. While Europeans did not necessarily believe that Moors were animals, they did understand that men still shared the same human form, they failed also to see them as people.

            The texts I have included, individually, show the different levels at which Europeans understood the Moors. Collectively, these books work to suggest that Europeans during Shakespeare’s time not only viewed Moors as lesser men, but that they saw them as creatures that fell somewhere on the spectrum between man and beast. By calling attention to the Europeans’ ambiguous understanding of those disparate from them, attention is also thus called to the true extent of racism that existed in Early Modern Europe. 

The Relevance of Anatomy in Othello

In Othello, discussions of anatomy are present throughout. Whether this discussion is based in emotional, racial or the anatomy of the text and texts that surround it, it is ever-present. In my exhibit, I hope to delve into the questions and ambiguity surrounding this discussion and unearth what it really means to be human through Shakespeare's lens. In the first page, Andreas Vesaillus redefines anatomy in his exploration of the human form in "The Fabric of the Human Body." In The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton hopes to understand what causes emotional distress. The Historie of the Turks helps the reader understand what a "moor" or different perceptions of race may look like in the seventeenth century. Anatomy of Tragedy dissects how scholars may have imagined Othello through a theatrical perspective after Shakespeare's death. A dive into Vittoria Colonna's poetry, the reader can better understand how poetry influenced perception of Italians before the authorship of Othello. Each of these pages explains a different lens through which the audience can imagine Othello. Moreover, each provides a dissection of the constant questions Shakespeare asks us in the text. Are people from different worlds equal? If not, in what ways do they diverge? Othello forces the reader to think a lot about the relationship between the "moor" and the Italians, how do these pieces of primary evidence reveal that relationship? Each item answers the same questions in an entirely unique way and reconsiders interpretations of Othello since. Moreover, anatomy is a central theme in Othello, and I hope that this exhibit serves to illustrate it in a variety of lenses. 

Cultural Climates In Shakespeare's Othello

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In this exhibit, I've showcased various texts and posters whose content or background exemplifies one aspect of a culture that is linked to William Shakespeare's Othello, and the way it has been performed, criticised, and linked to 17th century English society. The play is widely regarded as being such an important and valuable work because of the way in which it depicts social and cultural phenomena present within English society at the time, such as sexism and racism, both of which are inherent within Shakespeare's construction and characterization of the the moor and Desdemona. It is also not far-fetched to say that the play has influenced our understanding of the the time period in which it was written in innumerable ways. Because of this incontestable connection between Othello and culture, I've decided to explore the cultural paradigms of some of the main themes surrounding the play, namely gender and geography. Through this, I've tried to outline how established knowledge of these two aspects of society, or perhaps a lack thereof, influenced how the play may have been written and how it was interpreted. Additionally, I've attempted to explore the theatrical cultural paradigm, namely the ways in which plays were appreciated, through an analysis of a 17th century critique. Finally, so as not to limit the scope of the my exhibit to the 17th century, I chose to examine the racial element in the play's productions in the 19th century. This further demonstrates the continued influence of the play over several centuries.

 

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Othello and the Occult

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Shakespeare's "Othello" is an incredibly pervasive piece of literature, influencing audiences from the time it was first staged to modern day. One of the major components that shaped the Moor of Venice's lasting impact is its focus not only on the idea of the foreign "other", but on the themes of strangeness, mysticism, and the occult that was commonly paired with Moors during Shakespeare's time. This exhibit focuses on three major influences of the occult in Othello: exploration, science, and mysticism.

Due to the global focus on the newly explored during the time this famous piece was written, much of the occultism that surrounds Othello derives from his foreignness to the Venetians in the play. He is seen as strange because he is different and foreign – a commonly held misconception during this time due to the prominence of exploration in society.

Similarly, science was entering into its own sort of renaissance as more and more importance was placed on the scientific explanation of every day phenomena during this time. Science began finding any way possible to account for what the common people wanted to know – and namely what common people wanted to know was why differences in foreigners occurred. This desire for logic to explain what was then thought the unexplainable simply because of the vast amounts of unavailable knowledge at the time furthered the idea that those that were different from you were strange, and more importantly mystical.

Finally, much of "Othello" is firmly grounded in this idea of mysticism furthered by the emphasis on science and exploration during Shakespeare’s time. People wanted explanations for the “strangeness” they perceived in the “other” and thus often turned to magical elements to explain what science could not. 

Michael's Exhibit

William Shakespeare’s Othello offers a variety of areas for comparison to other historical works, primarily those that deliver an analysis of the central themes within the Elizabethan play. The original Othello by Shakespeare is centered around the role of greed and jealousy in causing actions by several of its characters that ultimately lead to the tragic end of the play. The purpose of this exhibit is to observe what aspects of Othello can be compared to certain hand-picked pieces of historical literature in regards to the numerous themes and conflicts that formed the play’s overall story. Several specific characters from the original play are also discussed within the exhibit, with each individual character having either their physical attributes or their effect on the plot compared to the development of another text.

Each historical text as part of the overall exhibit differs from the other in its subject and context, though they all collectively connect to various depictions of the play. Items within the exhibit are presented as influential works, often created at a time when they were viewed by many in the world as evolutionary in their genre. The exhibit itself aims to speak upon the original play’s efforts to deliver the message of a tragedy, whether by reflecting on such efforts or rejecting its motives. The ultimate goal here is to provide audiences well experienced in the art of Shakespeare with multiple depictions of the Elizabethan version that gear towards their own direction in interpreting specificities of early modern Othello.

Professor Cahill's Exhibit

This exhibit brings together the archival research of  11 memnbers of the first year seminar English 190 : Real Shakespeare : What's the Fall 2016 Evidemce?  All students worked in the Rose Library, uncovering important cultural contexts for Shakespeare's Othello.