Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture | Dr. Patricia Akhimie: “The Goodness of the Night: Editing Othello”

Join us for the Folger Institute’s annual Shakespeare’s Birthday Lecture, delivered this year by Dr. Patricia Akhimie, Director of the Folger Institute.

Every year, in commemoration of William Shakespeare’s birthday, the Folger invites a scholar to speak about Shakespeare and early modern life.

In her talk, Akhimie explores the ways strategic editing choices, such as omission and correction, produce and perpetuate racial stereotypes in Shakespeare’s Othello. These editing practices have both obscured the lived experiences of readers and redoubled the effect of racist words, phrases, and ideas that identify others as different and lesser—in the text, on the stage, and in the world. By exposing the race-making effects of textual editing, Dr. Akhimie’s work empowers a more diverse set of readers and thinkers to engage with Othello.