Skip to main content

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.

Log In
Sign Up

Log In
Sign Up
more

Alexa Alice Joubin

The George Washington University, English, Other

Middlebury College, Bread Loaf School of English, Faculty Member

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Literature (21L), Research Affiliate

Followers

1,645

Following

262

Co-authors

14

Public Views

George Washington University Professor and Middlebury College John M. Kirk, Jr. Chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (details below)

Founding Co-director, Digital Humanities Institute, George Washington University

George Washington University Professor of English, Theatre and Dance, East Asian Languages and Literatures, and International Affairs

Middlebury College John M. Kirk, Jr. Chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Bread Loaf School of English

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Affiliate in Literature

General Editor, The Shakespearean International Yearbook

Co-founder, Global Shakespeares, http://globalshakespeares.org/

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9914-3578

less

Related Authors

Nathalie Vienne-guerrin

Stanton B Garner Jr.

University of Tennessee

Nikolay Zakharov

Moscow University for the Humanities

University of Florida

University College Dublin

The University of Texas at Austin

Iain Robert Smith

King's College London

University of Birmingham

Yale University

InterestsView All (55)

Uploads

all
124 Articles
24 Books
24 Digital Scholarship
4 Book Series
30 Book Reviews

Book Reviews by Alexa Alice Joubin

Joubin's Screening Shakespeare reviewed in Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 16.1 (Fall 2024)

Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, Nov 3, 2024

Alexa Alice Joubin's open-access online textbook Screening Shakespeare adds to Shakespeare studie... more Alexa Alice Joubin's open-access online textbook Screening Shakespeare adds to Shakespeare studies by reminding us that adaptations, especially film adaptations of Shakespeare, require us to approach them with a set of tools and methodologies that are quite different and unique from those we use to approach a dramatic performance or a playtext. In addition to its open-access and multimodal approach, the most important contribution this book makes to the field is its centering of pedagogy over scholarship, or rather, showing that pedagogy is scholarship. ::: Reviewed by Sharanya Sridhar ::: DOI https://doi.org/10.18274/aph0pe78 ::: https://borrowers-ojs-azsu.tdl.org/borrowers/article/view/408

Shakespeare and East Asia, Reviewed in CLEAR 46 (December 2024): 191-201

Chinese Literature Essays Articles Reviews, 2024

This is an in-depth review written by Meilign Xiao of two books by Alexa Alice Joubin, namely Sha... more This is an in-depth review written by Meilign Xiao of two books by Alexa Alice Joubin, namely Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987-2007 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). The review endorses Joubin's radical rethinking of the methodology of research that has been obsessed with imposing political meanings on non-Western works, the impulsive tendency to interpret them as inherently serving practical political functions within national frames.

Shakespeare and East Asia, Reviewed in Shakespeare Bulletin 42.2 (Summer 2024): 317-321.

Shakespeare Bulletin, 2024

“Shakespeare and East Asia is a comprehensive and enlightening work accessible to readers interes... more “Shakespeare and East Asia is a comprehensive and enlightening work accessible to readers interested in the cultural exchange between the East and the West through performances of Shakespeare in various forms. Equally important, it also serves as an inspiration for future studies on global Shakespeares and their receptions.”

Reanimating Shakespeare’s Othello in Post-Racial America reviewed by Alexa Alice Joubin, Early Theatre 27.1 (2024): 127–30

Early Theatre, 2024

This book delves into two seeming paradoxes in popular and performance cultures: the proliferatio... more This book delves into two seeming paradoxes in popular and performance cultures: the proliferation of references to Othello and the peculiar erasure of Blackness in adaptations. This occurred between 2008 and 2016, which coincided with Barack Obama’s presidency. As much as the book critiques the hypocrisy of the Shakespeare industry, it also encourages artistic investment in antiracist work in post-post-racial America. Instead of attempting to speak of Othello as he is perceived in the play we should speak out against trans-historical racial tensions so as to reanimate both Othello and our collective future.

Shakespeare and East Asia, Reviewed by Christopher Thurman, Recherche littéraire / Literary Research 39 (2023): 233-238

Recherche littéraire / Literary Research, 2023

“Joubin makes a case for aesthetic merit to be acknowledged and enjoyed; for multiplicity and pla... more “Joubin makes a case for aesthetic merit to be acknowledged and enjoyed; for multiplicity and play in cultural borrowing to be discerned. Shakespeare thus becomes a mechanism for recognising the global in Asia, and for representing Asias across the globe.”

Review of Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965. Chinese Literature and Thought Today 54.3-4 (2024): 160-162

Chinese Literature and Thought Today, 2024

Modernity, as most students of literature may anticipate, is strongly associated with urban cultu... more Modernity, as most students of literature may anticipate, is strongly associated with urban culture. The field of modern Chinese studies has indeed experienced an urban turn in its increased attention to urban and modern sensibilities, as evidenced by the outpouring of studies on such Shanghai writers as Eileen Chang. When rural China does come into the picture, it typically emerges as case studies in anthropology and sociology. Yu Zhang begs the differ. In her illuminating study, Zhang deftly traces cultural representations of “going to the countryside as a distinctively modern experience in China between 1915 and 1965” across the 1949 divide in order to bring “the rural back to the central concern of Chinese cultural studies." This is not only a compelling thesis but also an important contribution to modern Chinese literary and cultural studies.

Review of #SuchStuff Podcast by the London Globe, Early Modern Digital Review 6.2 (2023): 149-153

Early Modern Digital Review, 2023

In this review, Alexa Alice Joubin reflects on her experience as a listener and tracks her studen... more In this review, Alexa Alice Joubin reflects on her experience as a listener and tracks her students' reactions to the #SuchStuff podcast series. "Educational podcasts have gained momentum in recent years. Closure of live performance venues and widespread lockdowns as part of public hygiene measures during the global COVID-19 pandemic further increased interest in at-home consumption of digitally delivered content for entertainment and education. Supported by the Globe Theatre’s education department, the #SuchStuff podcast offers thematic dialogues that can be categorized as a conversationalist chat show. Listeners and podcasters meeting in digital space may be such stuff as dreams are made on, but the important topics of social justice covered by this series will not melt into thin air."

Review of Globe Theatre #SuchStuff Podcast, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 46.2 (2023): 149-153

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 2023

Educational podcasts have gained momentum in recent years. Closure of live performance venues and... more Educational podcasts have gained momentum in recent years. Closure of live performance venues and widespread lockdowns as part of public hygiene measures during the global COVID-19 pandemic further increased interest in at-home consumption of digitally delivered content for entertainment and education. Supported by the Globe Theatre’s education department, the #SuchStuff podcast offers thematic dialogues that can be categorized as a “conversationalist chat show.” Listeners and podcasters meeting in digital space may be “such stuff as dreams are made on,” but the important topics of social justice covered by this series will not melt into thin air. ::: DOI: 10.33137/rr.v46i2.42296 ::: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/renref/article/view/42296

Shakespeare Quarterly Review of Shakespeare and East Asia by Alexa Alice Joubin. Shakespeare Quarterly 72.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2022), pp. 349-351

Shakespeare Quarterly, 2022

In Alexa Alice Joubin's book’s ample engagement with other scholars and current theories of adapt... more In Alexa Alice Joubin's book’s ample engagement with other scholars and current theories of adaptation, it is the very model of synthetic work. The tone is accessible, the scholarship up-to-date, the materials kaleidoscopic, the ideas clearly articulated. Her presentation is for the most part admirably linear and lucid. The sign-postings start with an analytic table of contents, which clearly identifies the plays, media and genres, and directors to be discussed in each chapter. Joubin has proposed for us a dazzling itinerary across these unpathed waters, undreamed shores, traversing states unborn and accents yet unknown.

Review of Onscreen Allusions to Shakespeare in Skenè: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies 9.2 (2023): 235-243.

Skenè: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies, 2023

“The title of this superlative recent volume of essays, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin and Victoria... more “The title of this superlative recent volume of essays, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin and Victoria Bladen, boldly announces its focus on a topic that could be seen as trivial: mere allusions to Shakespeare and his works in screen texts. The films and shows covered therein are not screen adaptations of Shakespeare, which are the subject of a great many books. Instead, the essays in this volume examine brief Shakespeare references in film or television texts.” “This study continues the ongoing work of postmodern and cultural studies strategic goals to read all cultural products and practices as texts that reveal the multiple potential meanings of any given text, which is always already embedded in multifarious contexts. The essays in this volume demonstrate that the Bard has been and is a ubiquitous presence in international media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, evidenced by the fact that each essay looks at film and/or televisual texts from a different country.” “Refreshingly, Joubin and Bladen contend that this volume examining Shakespearean allusions extends beyond the question of whether a screen text is or is not “Shakespeare(an)”, instead focusing “further along the intertextuality continuum” to look at the often powerful ideological and artistic work performed by brief references to Shakespeare. Indeed, the Bard’s brief appearances in screen texts like these, as adeptly argued in this volume, help keep Shakespeare alive in significant ways, rather than damning him to a purgatorial half-life.”

MCLC review of Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare. MCLC Resource Center Publication (February, 2024)

MCLC: Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2024

“The anthology remedies a problem in both Sinophone studies and Shakespeare scholarship: the scar... more “The anthology remedies a problem in both Sinophone studies and Shakespeare scholarship: the scarce availability of primary research materials on East Asian adaptations of Western classics. One of the main contributions of the anthology is its use of the concept of the Sinophone to deconstruct the Western-centric focus of Shakespeare scholarship.”

Review of Shakespeare and East Asia in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, November 22, 2023

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 2023

Alexa Alice Joubin's Shakespeare and East Asia is “a sweeping and formidably learned survey of th... more Alexa Alice Joubin's Shakespeare and East Asia is “a sweeping and formidably learned survey of the many ways in which artists across a vast part of the non-English-speaking world have been reimagining and repurposing Shakespeare’s plays from the 1950s through the present day. It’s a dense, informative, and occasionally dizzying tour d’horizon of modern film and theatre practice that makes “all the world’s a stage” seem like a virtually literal account.“

"Review of Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance by Hongwei Bao," Chinese Literature and Thought Today 54.1-2 (2023): 151-152

Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Sep 15, 2023

Queer performance as a genre is both complex and challenging to track, especially in the throes o... more Queer performance as a genre is both complex and challenging to track, especially in the throes of political oppression. Why should people who do not identify as queer care about queer performance? Trans-identified dancer Jin Xing has this to say: "As long as we live together in a society, people can always find excuses to discriminate against each other. If you are not transsexual, you may be gay or lesbian; if you are not gay or lesbian, you may still be single at a marriageable age; if you are married, you may still be poor; if you are not poor, you may be overweight; if you are not overweight, you may need a higher university degree" (76). Clearly one does not need to embody all identities in order to oppose systemic oppression, whatever form it may take. This is one of the core messages of Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance by Hongwei Bao.

Review of Migrating Shakespeare: First European Encounters, Routes and Networks, in Renaissance Quarterly 76.2 (Summer 2023): 788-789

Renaissance Quarterly, Aug 1, 2023

This book traces “waves of migration” of people and of Shakespeare’s texts Europe in the seventee... more This book traces “waves of migration” of people and of Shakespeare’s texts Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Covering a larger swath of continental Europe, case studies in Migrating Shakespeare cohere around the idea of cultural assimilation and map the influence of trade and travel on textual migrations. Positivist and antithetical patterns coexist in early European reception of Shakespeare. This book successfully demonstrates the multilingual and multicultural nature of the transmission of Shakespeare’s texts within a context where cultural meanings are relational.

Theatre Journal Review of Shakespeare and East Asia by Alexa Alice Joubin. Theatre Journal 74.3 (September, 2022): 408-409.

Theatre Journal, 2022

As a single-authored monograph, Shakespeare and East Asia presents a clear agenda of resisting na... more As a single-authored monograph, Shakespeare and East Asia presents a clear agenda of resisting national allegory approaches in favor of rhizomatic readings, which can highlight connections and cross-fertilization among Asian and Western Shakespeare works in intercultural, intracultural, and intermedial ways. :::: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/865454

Review of Performing the Socialist State by Xiaomei Chen, in CLEAR: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 45 (2023): 338-340

CLEAR: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews , 2023

In this review, Alexa Alice Joubin outlines the main argument of Xiaomei Chen's Performing the So... more In this review, Alexa Alice Joubin outlines the main argument of Xiaomei Chen's Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture. "The eight chronologically- and thematically-organized chapters in this book provide a much-needed critical survey of spoken drama (huaju 话剧) from its inception through the Republican and Maoist eras to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Spoken drama, as Chen’s diachronic study shows, has evolved across an astonishing range of media in the forms of women’s theatre, socialist theatre, “red classic” films, and even in the “sonic theatre” of the Internationale, the unofficial anthem of various communist and socialist movements." "The book stakes two important claims. First, the book demonstrates that several political and aesthetic elements inform the development of modern theatre in various periods that have previously been regarded as siloed and distinct, including the Republican, socialist, and postsocialist eras. Secondly, the book argues that, contrary to common wisdom, state regulation and censorship affect, but do not stifle, artistic imagination." ::: 0161-9705

Review of Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform, in CLEAR: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 45 (2023): 335-338

CLEAR: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 2023

Going against the grain, this collection counters the common perception of the Maoist era as a ti... more Going against the grain, this collection counters the common perception of the Maoist era as a time of ideological conformity. The contributors persuasively demonstrate that theatre activities were varied and lively between the 1950s and 1970s. While there was state control over the arts, performances in urban spaces were more frequently censored than those in the countryside. This admirable collection of an Introduction, nine chapters, and Xiaomei Chen’s “personal reflection” on her experience growing up in Maoist China which serves as the epilogue, covers a wide range of performance genres, including xiqu 戲曲 operas, huaju 話劇 spoken drama pieces, wuju 舞劇 dance drama productions, and propaganda performances. Featuring research by “theater specialists, literary scholars, historians, comparatists, and cultural anthropologists,” this co-edited book is truly multidisciplinary (271).

Multicultural Shakespeare Review of Shakespeare and East Asia by Alexa Alice Joubin. Multicultural Shakespeare 23.38 (2021): 214-217 (Review by Jessica Chiba)

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 2023

“While there have been many books on Shakespeare reception, a distinctive feature of Alexa Alice ... more “While there have been many books on Shakespeare reception, a distinctive feature of Alexa Alice Joubin’s book is that it eschews cultural profiling—the tendency to bracket, for example, Shakespeare in Japan in isolation from other cultural influences. Joubin’s approach lights the way for future studies that may build on the critical work she has done in tracing these broad networks across borders, cultures and languages.” ::: https://www.czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/szekspir/article/view/10725

The Mercurian review of Shakespeare and East Asia. The Mercurian: A Theatrical Translation Review, 8.4 (Fall 2021): 343-344

The Mercurian: A Theatrical Translation Review, 2021

Astutely charting shared and unique patterns in post-1950s East Asian adaptations and interpretat... more Astutely charting shared and unique patterns in post-1950s East Asian adaptations and interpretations of Shakespeare across a range of contexts, genres and media—theatrical and cinematic—Alexa Alice Joubin eschews the prevailing (and potentially harmful) approach to “Global Shakespeare” that anchors performances in their perceived cultural roots and values them more for their political rather than their aesthetic qualities. Joubin also pushes back against the utilization of “Asian Shakespeares” for the purposes of diversifying scholarship and curricula in the Anglo-American academy, as well as the exoticization of these adaptations, in particular, the tendency to over-emphasize how much they deviate from Anglophone practices. Both trends, she argues, have resulted in critical blind-spots in our understanding of the meaning and significance of “Asian Shakespeares,” and the overlooking of the multifarious structural and thematic connections between productions from diverse locales. Organizing her cutting-edge book thematically—rather than chronologically or geopolitically—Joubin identifies four themes in particular that distinguish East Asian Shakespeares in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: 1) formalistic innovations in sound and spectacle, 2) the remedial uses of Shakespeare’s plays, 3) conflicting and polity-driven production and reception and 4) multilingualism in diasporic adaptations. ::: ISSN: 2160-3316

"Review of Shakespeare’s Accents: Voicing Identity in Performance by Sonia Massai," Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, volume 34, 2021, pp. 213-215.

Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Nov 14, 2021

Voices carry weight in the embodiment of characters on stage, because accents are a strong marker... more Voices carry weight in the embodiment of characters on stage, because accents are a strong marker of a character’s and actor’s identity. Orlando praises Rosalind’s courtly accent in As You Like It by saying “your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling” (3.2.334–35), for example. :::: Sonia Massai’s new book explores the cultural connotation of regional accents in four centuries of performances of Shakespeare on the English stage. Shakespeare is selected for case study because, as Massai asserts, since the mid-eighteenth century the “National Poet” has played a key role “in the establishment of a Standard English pronunciation” and Received Pronunciation (1–2) and thus the canon provides fertile ground for understanding English attitudes toward accents.

Log In

or

Email

Password

Remember me on this computer

or reset password

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

Need an account? Click here to sign up

About
Press
Papers
Topics
Academia.edu Journals
We're Hiring!
Help Center

Find new research papers in:
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Health Sciences
Ecology
Earth Sciences
Cognitive Science
Mathematics
Computer Science

Terms
Privacy
Copyright
Content Policy
Academia ©2025