политика/општество

Yanis Varoufakis considers himself a politician by necessity, not by choice. An economist and academic by training, he became Greece’s finance minister amidst the country's financial crisis, creating an image for himself both beloved and reviled. He came to the Library last April to discuss this complicated role and his recent book, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future. He was joined in conversation by  renowned academic and theorist Noam Chomsky.

Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky on Money and The Sickest Joke in the History of Humankind

Neema welcomes Jeffrey R. Wilson (Harvard) to discuss the election of Donald Trump, its impact on the intellectual climate, and some of the ways in which Shakespeare was used in the coverage of the US election. Wilson’s essay, “Public Shakespeareanism: The Bard in the 2016 American Presidential Election,” is available upon request from the author; email jeffreywilson@fas.harvard.edu. The instances of “public Shakespeareanism” discussed in the essay and the podcast include:

Andrew Cutrofello, “Shakespeare and Trump: What’s in a Name?” PublicSeminar.com (December 15, 2015), http://www.publicseminar.org/2015/12/shakespeare-and-trump-whats-in-a-name.

Brian Leiter, “Shakespeare on Trump: Money Made the Man,” The Huffington Post (Feb 29, 2016), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-leiter/shakespeare-on-trump-money-made-the-man_b_9344370.html.

Charles McNulty, “The Theater of Trump: What Shakespeare can teach us about the Donald,” Los Angeles Times (May 26, 2016), http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-0529-shakespeare-trump-20160518-snap-htmlstory.html.

Paul Hamilton, “Trumping Shakespeare: Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and the Rise of the Clown Politician,” Kingston Shakespeare Seminar (July 11, 2016), https://kingstonshakespeareseminar.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/trumping-shakespeare-donald-trump-boris-johnson-and-the-rise-of-the-clown-politician/.

Peter C. Herman, “Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth,’ Donald Trump, and the Republican Party,” Times of San Diego (Aug. 7, 2016), https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2016/08/07/shakespeares-macbeth-donald-trump-and-the-republican-party/.

Stephen Greenblatt, “Shakespeare Explains the 2016 Election,” New York Times Sunday Review (Oct. 8, 2016), http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opinion/sunday/shakespeare-explains-the-2016-election.html.

Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory

SCT #34: Shakespeare and Trump with Jeffrey R. Wilson

In this podcast Dr Neema Parvini, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Surrey, and author of several books, interviews various Shakespeare scholars and literary theorists from around the world in a bid to gain an understanding of the current state of play in Shakespeare studies and in literary criticism more generally. Through a series of candid talks, it will tackle the biggest theoretical and practical questions that have preoccupied scholars and readers of Shakespeare alike for generations: the idea that history is driven by human beings versus the idea that it is driven by forces beyond our control, the individual versus society, nature versus nurture, and freedom versus determinism.