Our guest speaker, Dr. Phyllis Rackin, proposes that the plays we choose to emphasize tell us more about our own assumptions regarding women than they do about those of Shakespeare and his original audiences. The plays she will focus on are The Taming of the Shrew, which has been very popular in recent times, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Phyllis Rackin is a Professor of English Emerita from the University of Pennsylvania and a former President of the Shakespeare Association of America. She has published numerous scholarly articles on Shakespeare and related subjects in anthologies and in such journals as PMLA (Modern Language Association of America), Shakespeare Quarterly, and Shakespeare-Jahrbuch. Professor Rackin has also published five books on Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Tragedies; Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles; and Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories, which she wrote in collaboration with Professor Jean E. Howard; Shakespeare and Women, and an anthology of essays on the Merry Wives of Windsor, co-edited with Professor Evelyn Gajowski. Her awards include an ACLS Fellowship and a Lindback award for distinguished teaching.