Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Great Shakespeareans will be an essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.

A classic. Topics include resource-sharing networks, the importance of nonbook formats, the greater complexity of censorship challenges, and the expansion of the library's informational role.

Virginia C. Gildersleeve was the most influential dean of Barnard College, which she led from 1911 to 1947. An organizer of the Seven College Conference, or “Seven Sisters,” she defended women's intellectual abilities and the value of the liberal arts. She also amassed a strong set of foreign policy credentials and, at the peak of her prominence in 1945, served as the sole woman member of the U.S. delegation to the drafting of the United Nations Charter. But her accomplishments are undercut by other factors: she had a reputation for bias against Jewish applicants for admission to Barnard and early in the 1930s voiced an indulgent view of the Nazi regime. In this biography, historian Nancy Woloch explores Gildersleeve’s complicated career in academia and public life. At once a privileged insider, prone to elitism and insularity, and a perpetual outsider to the sexist establishment in whose ranks she sought to ascend, Gildersleeve stands out as richly contradictory. The book examines her initiatives in higher education, her savvy administration, her strategies for gaining influence in academic life, the ways that she acquired and deployed expertise, and her drive to take part in the world of foreign affairs. Woloch draws out her ambivalent stance in the women’s movement, concerned with women’s status but opposed to demands for equal rights. Tracing resonant themes of ambition, competition, and rivalry, The Insider masterfully weaves Gildersleeve’s life into the histories of education, international relations, and feminism.

Long sought by scholars as the Holy Grail of world literature, and masquerading under the censor's makeshift title, "The second maiden's tragedy," this lost play was discovered by Charles Hamilton, a forensic document examiner and literary historian.

The second set of volumes in the eighteen-volume series Great Shakespeareans, covering the work of nineteen key figures who influenced the global understanding of Shakespeare

Co-authored by the resident dramaturg at Shakespeare Theatre Company and a long-time scholarly consultant, this book chronicles how a small repertory troupe at the Folger Theatre on Capitol Hill became an internationally renowned company performing in a lavish, multi-venue performing arts centre in downtown Washington, D.C. The artistic vision and business acumen of Michael Kahn, the founding Artistic Director, largely catalyzed this transformation, but so too did the forces of neoliberalism and, more recently, globalization and new media. Accordingly, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company not only examines directorial decision-making but also 3 decades of social and economic change in the nation's capital, from the complexities of gentrification to the arts policies of successive administrations. In addition to discussions of directorial practice, this book examines the ambivalence of American theatre artists toward their British cultural inheritance. Analyses of representative productions and interviews with Kahn and his British successor, Simon Godwin, illuminate this complex relationship: one that aspires to a cosmopolitan Anglophilia while positioning classically trained American actors as worthy rivals to their counterparts at the RSC and the National Theatre of Great Britain.

In this provocative and timely collection of essays--five published for the first time--one of the most important ethnohistorians writing today, James Axtell, explores the key role of imagination both in our perception of strangers and in the writing of history. Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America, this collection covers a wide range of topics dealing with American history. Three essays view the invasion of North America from the perspective of the Indians, whose land it was. The very first meetings, he finds, were nearly always peaceful. Other essays describe native encounters with colonial traders--creating "the first consumer revolution"--and Jesuit missionaries in Canada and Mexico. Despite the tragedy of many of the encounters, Axtell also finds that there was much humor in Indian-European negotiations over peace, sex, and war. In the final section he conducts searching analyses of how college textbooks treat the initial century of American history, how America's human face changed from all brown in 1492 to predominantly white and black by 1792, and how we handled moral questions during the Quincentenary. He concludes with an extensive review of the Quincentenary scholarship--books, films, TV, and museum exhibits--and suggestions for how we can assimilate what we have learned.