Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture: "Shakespeare Beyond Relevance" with Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper
Booking and details
Dates Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 7pm
Venue Folger Theatre
Tickets Free, registration required
Join us for the Folger Institute’s annual Shakespeare’s Birthday Lecture with Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, who will be accompanied by special guest Alyssa Keegan.
Every year, in commemoration of William Shakespeare’s birthday, the Folger invites a scholar to speak about Shakespeare and early modern life.
ASL interpretation
ASL interpretation will be provided. For other accessibility accommodations, contact Visitor Experience at visitorservices@folger.edu.
About the lecture: “Shakespeare Beyond Relevance”
In recent years, there has been a rising interest in ‘public humanities’ or ‘public scholarship’. The idea of sharing scholarship with a general audience or creating a public humanities project is nothing new, of course. But in the past five years, there seems to have been a tangible urgency prompting scholars of the humanities to make their research appeal more broadly; for Shakespeare studies, this involves making Shakespeare relevant, even though this is something each generation has done for about 400 years.
For teachers, this means finding new strategies to relate Shakespeare to the current moment and to the lives and experiences of their students. But what does it mean for us in 2025 if Shakespeare is decidedly relevant? What do we mean by this term anyway? Is it about keeping Shakespeare, and by extension, the arts and humanities, in the cultural and public conversation? And if so, is this enough? Taking the idea of ‘relevance’ as a starting point, this talk will explore ideas of how to position Shakespeare today as we move into a challenging phase of American democracy.
Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper
Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper is the eighth director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. The Folger opened in 1932 as a home to the monumental collection of Shakespeare’s works and materials from the early modern world amassed by founders Henry and Emily Folger. Today, Dr. Karim-Cooper leads a staff of around 150 who continue to grow and care for the collection, provide opportunities for research and scholarship, program the Folger’s Elizabethan-style theatre, offer training and classes for educators and students, and operate museum galleries and a café. As the Folger approaches its second century, Dr. Karim-Cooper is positioning the organization as an international leader for practical applications of Shakespeare and the humanities in civic life.
Alyssa Keegan
Alyssa Keegan (Orsino) (they/them) Folger Theatre: Richard III. Studio Theatre: Scenarios, Contractions; Ford’s Theatre: Come From Away; Round House Theatre: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Helen Hayes Award, Best Actress), How I Learned to Drive, Becky Shaw; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: Gloria, Botticelli in the Fire, Shipwreck; Shakespeare Theatre Company/American Conservatory Theater: Vanity Fair; Kennedy Center: Digging Up Dessa, Working (The Labor Heritage Foundation in honor of laborers during the pandemic). Television: Law & Order SVU, New Amsterdam (NBC), Bull (CBS). Voice Over: Reagan Somerset in KF Breene’s USA Today best-selling book series, Demon Days Vampire Nights.
About Folger Institute
The Folger Institute is a center for early modern research at the Folger Shakespeare Library that brings public audiences together with researchers to explore the cultures and legacies of the early modern world. Learn more.
Related
Folger Shakespeare Library Names Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper as Director
Press release: May 20, 2024
Farah Karim-Cooper on The Great White Bard
Can we love Shakespeare and be antiracist? Farah Karim-Cooper’s new book explores the language of race and difference in plays such as Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, and The Tempest.