Other Academic Activities

 

The “Global Shakespeare" or better called the “Local Shakespeare" shows that the plays of the British Bard, William Shakespeare, are internationally appealing to all ages, cultures and ideologies and what has made them go global or become localized or domesticated is the fact that his plays have been appropriated into almost every culture worldwide. In his book The Western Canon (1994), Harold Bloom asserts that Shakespeare's works constitute the center of the world literary canon. He is neither Western nor Eastern and is less and less Eurocentric. In his article “Creating Shakespeare" Graham Holderness (2013) points out that “Global' Shakespeare is constructed from myriads of local Shakespeare that have mutated and taken root in other cultures, 'assimilated', 'transplanted', producing new species in the altered circumstances of a new climate and soil." In her article “Vanishing Intertexts in the Arab Hamlet Tradition" Margaret Litvin (2007) calls the numerous political appropriations, rewrites and offshoots of Shakespeare's plays the “global kaleidoscope of sources and models." Safi Mahfouz (2024) states that “Localizing, domesticating and indigenizing Shakespeare's plays in almost every language is rapidly increasing to the extent that the matchless legacy of the British Bard's works has become inclusive of all cultures." The aim of this research group is to motivate members and scholars to write research articles about Arab appropriations of Shakespeare's plays written and performed in the Arab World. ​​