Ayanna Thompson, professor of English at George Washington University, will deliver a presentation, “Shakespeare, Race, and Performance: What We Still Don’t Know,” on Thursday, Nov. 30, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in Room 2300D in the Memorial Student Center on the campus of Texas A&M University.
The Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Visiting Scholar Program, which has enabled Texas A&M undergraduates to learn from some of America’s most distinguished scholars since 1956, is hosting the guest.
Thompson specializes in Renaissance drama and issues of race in and as performance. She is the author of “Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centered Approach,” “Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America,” and “Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage.” She wrote the new introduction for the revised “Arden 3 Othello,” and she is the editor of “Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance.” Currently on the editorial boards of the Shakespeare Quarterly, Renaissance Drama and Shakespeare Bulletin, she has served as a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and a member of the board of directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars.
Founded in 1776, the Phi Beta Kappa Society is the nation’s most prestigious academic honor society. It has chapters at 286 colleges and universities and more than half a million members throughout the country. Its mission is to champion education in the liberal arts and sciences, to recognize academic excellence, and to foster freedom of thought and expression.
Sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa, the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, the Department of English, and LAUNCH: Undergraduate Research and Honors at Texas A&M, the program contributes to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholars and the resident faculty and students.
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Media contact: Daniel Conway, professor of philosophy and president of Phi Beta Kappa, Kappa of Texas Chapter, at conway@tamu.edu; or Heather Rodriguez, liberal arts communications specialist, at 979-845-6061 or hrodriguez@tamu.edu.
