I have presented my research at the Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Annual Conference, the Shakespearean Theatre Conference at Stratford, the Modern Language Association Convention, and the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference. I have published research articles in Borrowers and Lenders and Shakespeare Studies, and I received the J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize from the Shakespeare Association of American in 2024.
Dissertation (2023):
My dissertation “Tell it again, but different”: Gender, Race, and Adaptation in The Taming of the Shrew and Othello analyzes contemporary adaptations of two of Shakespeare’s most problematic plays: The Taming of the Shrew and Othello, which have received considerable critique for how they voice and rely on sexism and racism. Focusing on adaptation enables me to reorient critical attention from Shakespeare’s plays to how they are used to perpetuate or disrupt problematic representations of gender, race, sexuality, and class. Doing so requires a methodological innovation. Shakespearean adaptation scholarship typically relies on two analytic methods: single-text close readings (a micro level analysis) or broader comparisons across plays to consider large-scale patterns and institutions (a macro level analysis). Bringing these two methods together, my meso level analysis illuminates how expectations of genre and form operate comparatively and across media and/or institution (the macro) to dictate and circumscribe the work of particular reworkings (the micro) in relation to adaptive clusters around specific plays (the meso).
Insofar as my method balances these imperatives, I aim to change how Shakespearean critics approach adaptations—not as singular texts and their contexts or as part of Shakespeare’s larger oeuvre, but as curated groupings. By comparing both the multiple adaptations that constitute each play’s cluster and the way different plays produce different patterns, as well as analyzing the effect those patterns have on subsequent reworkings, my method attends to the limitations and possibilities of adaptation, specifically when it comes to the cultural impact of Shakespeare’s “problem plays.”
Across the two sections of my project, I examine contemporary adaptations of two of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays: The Taming of the Shrew and Othello. In each case, the first chapter of the section considers the problems that have arisen from the play and its performance history and how adaptations have typically responded to them, while the second chapter performs close readings of specific adaptations. Because adaptations are inherently intertextual and multimodal, they place unique methodological demands on the reader and viewer, requiring a careful balance of close reading, comparison, and attention to historical, cultural, and generic specificity. Within my project, I also engage with film theory, media studies, popular culture studies, performance studies, feminist theory, and critical race studies, framing Shakespearean adaptation as an ongoing process that requires continual interdisciplinary contextualization.
Rebecca Hixon 