9: Hamlet’s Heirs with Linda Charnes

Dr. Linda Charnes ––  Professor of English, European Studies and Gender Studies at Indiana
University, Bloomington where she has taught since 1989–– joined Jen to talk about Hamlet, Talionic Law (aka retributive eye-for-an-eye justice), and America’s revenge fantasies. 

She is the author of several books about Shakespeare, contemporary politics, and political psychology. Her first book was Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare published in 1993 by Harvard University Press, followed by Hamlet’s Heirs: Shakespeare and the Politics of a New Millennium, originally published in 2007 by Routledge, 2007, with a second edition in 2015.

Dr. Charnes has bucked the trend of academic treatments of Shakespeare’s work in favor of
unorthodox approaches that challenge temporal periods, field silos and most importantly,
divides between ivory tower and mass cultural versions of Shakespeare’s plays. An expert in
psychoanalytic and political theories, She was among the first to create and
model an unorthodox blending of theoretical approaches, which she has called “a theory
without organs.” 

Dr. Charnes has lectured at prestigious venues all over the world, and directed faculty seminars at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the International Shakespeare Conference at Stratford-Upon-Avon. She fondly recalls giving the pre-performance lecture on Hamlet at the New Globe Theater in London, on the first night of Mark Rylance’s performance
in the title role. The date was July 4th , 2000.

In 2021, she was awarded the James P. Holland Award for Career Distinguished Teaching and
Service to Students at Indiana University, Bloomington.

For a cool photo of Linda click here for the website

Contact Booked Up:

You can email Jen & the Booked Up team at: BOOKEDUP@POLITICON.COM or by writing to: 

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Get More from Linda Charnes
Website |  Author of HAMLET’S HEIRS and NOTORIOUS IDENTITY


Get More from Jen Taub:
Twitter | Website | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY