Who Owns Shakespeare? Dr. Varsha Panjwani Gives Us an Answer
By Elissa Johnston
Sometimes we talk about Shakespeare as if his work is sacred, or at least close to it, cultural capital available only to the (privileged, white, usually male) academic community. Dr. Varsha Panjwani, who teaches Shakespeare classes at Fordham in London, is working to show how Shakespeare can be different.
In a recent video posted by Fordham University’s official Youtube account (which you can find here!), Dr. Panjwani shared some of her philosophy of teaching Shakespeare. “When most people come to Shakespeare, they are thinking about, you know, an old balding middle-aged historical costumed guy who is on a pedestal and is not relevant to their lives, but that is not how we teach Shakespeare. Here, we talk about how Shakespeare is making an appearance in social justice issues, in issues about gender that are happening today.”
“I think my focus is always on what Shakespeare can do for us and has done for us, and how we can shape Shakespeare to talk about what is important for us today. The one thing that I really want my students to get from my course is that anyone can own Shakespeare and can harness the cultural power that Shakespeare provides for bringing Shakespeare back to their communities.”
Since 2020, Dr. Panjwani has also hosted a podcast that works to show that anyone can own Shakespeare: Women and Shakespeare (available from Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, and her website). In her introduction episode, she shares that she started the podcast as a response to the problems of gendered access she saw in academic approaches to Shakespeare: “… as you know, my research and teaching is centred around Shakespeare and what I increasingly began noticing is that, despite the overwhelming number of women students and scholars in this field of study, a very small percentage of women scholars get cited in essays and presentations. Also, my female colleagues have found themselves at conferences with all-male keynote speakers many times. In theatre, I often hear about how women actors still have to really fight for their interpretations, because all the focus is on male characters, say Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and so on. In public discourse as well, I noticed how women are very rarely asked to be commentators on Shakespeare, and even when they're asked, the selection is really not diverse enough. This collective silence of women experts on Shakespeare was becoming really oppressive to me. So I wanted to create a platform where women scholars of Shakespeare could be heard loudly, clearly and proudly, which is why this series started.”
Through this podcast, Dr. Panjwani is working not just to empower the voices of women experts on Shakespeare, but to open the conversations she guides to a wider public. She shares in the introduction episode to her podcast that she started the project with a non-academic audience in mind. She says, “I think that this podcast is for anyone who's interested in Shakespeare. So that is what we had in mind when we were creating it. We have not used, for instance, obscure jargon so that a non-specialist can follow the conversation easily. This is also why the podcast is free, and I was very adamant that it would be free so that it is accessible not only to university-going students, but to anyone who wants to know more about various facets of Shakespeare. In fact, the medium of podcast was also dictated by this desire to cater to a variety of people, because if you are a student or in academia, you may, at least theoretically, have access to a library and get time to read books. But not everyone can afford these pleasures. So a podcast, however, can be listened to while commuting, cooking, gardening, whatever, really. But having said this, I also think that established academics will find it useful due to the range of voices that have been consulted and the level of analysis that is offered by each guest.”
Dr. Panjwani’s podcast does indeed provide a wide range of perspectives for her listeners. Her guests include prominent women actors of color (such as Adjoa Andoh), prolific scholars (like Diana Henderson), and even Fordham English’s very own Mary Bly talking about how her novel Lizzie and Dante reworks Romeo and Juliet. The rich selection of guests who have joined her to discuss Shakespeare help to highlight the many ways in which his texts remain embedded within our contemporary cultural dialogues. As both a teacher and a creator, Dr. Panjwani is working to ensure that everyone who wants to can own Shakespeare.
