Includes bibliographical references and index.

Repositioning Shakespeare offers a far-reaching assessment of how the bard has been appropriated within post-colonial contexts, especially in the Unites States. Thomas Cartelli explores how Shakespeare is repositioned as contemporary cultures seek to renegotiate Shakespeare's standing as a privieged site of authority within their own nation formations. Cartelli provides innovative readings of texts and events that position themselves in relation to Shakespeare, such as: polemical essays by Walt Whitman the nineteenth-century play, 'Jack Cade', commissioned and staged by the first major American Shakespeare actor an essay on labour-management reform by social activist Jane Addams novels by Aphra Behn, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Michelle Cliff, Tayeb Salih, Nadine Gordimer and Robert Stone the 1849 Astor Place Riot films by James Ivory and Gus Van Sant Repositioning Shakespare makes an original contribution to debates about the cultural uses of Shakespeare, as well as the question of what counts as postcolonial.