SHAKESPEARE

From Joe Malchow’s Dartblog: “Does anyone happen to have an update on the continuing search of the Dartmouth English Faculty for a Shakespeare professor?”

My Answer (tongue firmly in cheek): I understand that Dartmouth has had multiple candidates for this Professor of English position specializing in Shakespeare. However, all of these candidates have a very limited repertoire of Shakespeare’s plays on which they can pedagogically pontificate. These include Othello’s Moorish instincts in “Othello” and Kate’s internal gender conflicts in “The Taming of the Shrew”. These wantings in turn stem from the (unfortunate) limited range of literature classes that all these candidates took in college and graduate school. They were all constrained by their specialization in African-American and Feminine & Gender Studies programs.

(Talk about looking through the wrong end of the telescope.)