[SILS Faculty Seminar] Shakespeare and Transcultural Adaptation and Appropriation

・Lecturer: Professor MORITA, Norimasa

・Lecturer Info: https://w-rdb.waseda.jp/html/100000252_en.html

・Title: Shakespeare and Transcultural Adaptation and Appropriation

・Day and Time:  January 15, 2026 6:30pm-

・Abstract:

In 2016, Waseda University and the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham signed an agreement for research collaboration on the works of Shakespeare. Since then, the two institutions have worked closely together, organizing a wide range of academic events. Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, often reminds us that Shakespeare is “the lingua franca of world drama” and a global phenomenon that transcends national boundaries. In this spirit, the primary focus of our collaboration has been the study of Shakespeare as a global playwright and the investigation of the transcultural adaptation of his works. In this faculty seminar, I will introduce my contributions to the Waseda–Birmingham research collaboration for the past years. These include research on the cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays in Italian silent films; novelistic adaptations of Hamlet by three Japanese authors—Shiga Naoya, Kobayashi Hideo, and Ōoka Shōhei; Shakespeare’s Republican Roman plays (Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra) and monarchist and imperialist reinterpretations of them by the filmmaker Enrico Guazzoni during the period of imperial expansion under Mussolini’s Fascist regime. The next major collaborative event will be a three-day conference, ‘Shakespeare in a Polarized World’, to be held at the Waseda Brussels Office and co-hosted by Waseda University, the University of Birmingham, and the Free University of Brussels. For this conference, I am planning to present a paper that traces the history of adaptations of Coriolanus from John Philip Kemble to Ninagawa Yukio, via Bertolt Brecht, focusing on how stage characterizations of Coriolanus have oscillated between monarchist war hero and anti-republican villain.