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Shakespeare studies
THE second session of Shakespeare Study Circle, Bangladesh (a literary organization of the Department of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh), was held on 29 October 2009 in the University Board Room with Professor Mohit UI Alam, Head of DEH, presiding.
The topic of discussion was “The Imperial Design and Shakespeare,” presented very illuminatingly by Prof Alam, in which, drawing on the very latest information in the field, he showed Shakespeare to have been working in a Eurocentric paradigm of empire that started, as Giambattista Vico, an eighteenth-century philosopher, claimed, with the 'poetic geography' formed by the ancient Greece and came down to the British through the Roman imperial poetics. He also showed how Shakespeare was used as an imperial agency both to propagate imperialism and to contain resistance during the colonial expansion, particularly when the British were seeking to enforce a secular pedagogy in British India. He also said that in that cultural performance, however, Shakespeare had also been largely appropriated by the colonized to form their own response of resistance to the imperialistic hegemony.
Kazi Nabil Ahmed, Member, Board of Governors, ULAB, commented that in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar there is a noticeable toning down of Caesar's character which might be proof that Shakespeare probably had played the role of a saboteur so far as the idea of empire was concerned. He also remarked, with a tinge of sarcasm, that Macaulay's ghost was to be found still present in our society.
Professor Nurul Karim Nasim, Chairman, Department of English, Atish Dipankar University, said postcolonial studies paradoxically had essentialized Shakespeare in their bid to decanonize him.
M. Shafiqul Islam, an additional secretary to the government and Shakespeare buff, quoting some lines from Julius Caesar, opined that though Shakespeare might not have anticipated a British India, yet it is the empire of Shakespeare that persists.
Zakir Hossain Mazumder, assistant professor of DEH, commented that Prof Alam's talk had adopted the mode of 'thick description' recently in vogue in literary criticism, while Asif Iqbal, lecturer in English, Stamford University, remarked that in Shakespearean movies the imperialistic message is always ironically twisted.
The second part of the programme comprised an introduction of nine new books on Shakespeare that have recently been acquired by SSC,B. Nasrin Islam, lecturer, DEH, introduced four of them while Musarrat Shameem, another lecturer of DEH, introduced the remaining five
The books introduced were: 1. David Crystal, 'Think on my Words’: Exploring Shakespeare's Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); 2. Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); 3. Lemuel A. Johnson, Shakespeare in Africa (And other venues): Import and the Appropriation of Culture (Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, Inc., 1998); 4. Dick Riley, Shakespeare's Consuls, Cardinals, and Kings: The Real History behind the Plays (New York and London: Continuum, 2008); 5. Germaine Greer, Shakespeare's Wife (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2007); 6. Bhim S. Dahiya, ed., Postmodern Essays on Love, Sex, and Marriage in Shakespeare (New Delhi: Viva Books, 2008); 7. Courtney Lehmann, Shakespeare Remains: Theatre to Film, Early Modern to Postmodern (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002); 8. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980, 2005); and 9. Emma Smith, The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
The session concluded with a reading of the funeral scene from Julius Caesar by Abdullah Al Mamun (Brutus) and S. M. Ariful Islam (Antony), both lecturers of DEH.
It may be mentioned here that Shakespeare Study Circle, Bangladesh, was founded in April 2009 and subsequently got enlisted by the Shakespeare Institute Library, Stratford-upon-Avon. Its first session was held on 25 April 2009.