91�ؿ�

Thanks to a generous bequest from the late Dr. Iris Annette Pearce, 91�ؿ� enjoys a range of Shakespeare-related resources unique among American liberal arts colleges. The Pearce Shakespeare Endowment was established in 2007 to enrich courses in Shakespeare and support events for the entire campus.

Funds generated by Dr. Pearce’s gift aid Shakespeare studies through lectures by visiting scholars; conferences and symposia; support for research; productions of plays; periods of residence by performing artists; and other innovative programming to enhance Shakespeare at 91�ؿ� and in the greater Memphis 91�ؿ�. Key institutional partnerships have helped bring these events to a wide range of audiences.

'Students at 91�ؿ� are granted singular access to the world of Shakespeare through the Pearce Endowment. Academics and artists come together to collaborate with different faculty, enhancing their classroom discussions. The programming acts in tandem with coursework, allowing students to delve deeper into their studies and to understand how Shakespeare’s work has shaped our modern world. The Pearce Endowment is essential in cultivating thoughtful, curious scholars; I find these lessons constantly relevant in my work!" —  ’21, Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator,  

Fall 2024

October 24, 2024, 6pm CST  
“How Plays Teach Us to See”
 Location: Blount Auditorium, Buckman Hall 

Visitors: to receive a parking pass,

(Bard College), “Fair is Foul, and Foul is Fair”

Abstract: This talk explores how Macbeth dramatizes a crisis in the operations of judgment, in how individuals distinguish between real and illusory, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Tracing this crisis to how Renaissance educational practices attempted to cultivate ethical statesmen by training them in rhetorical style, I’ll propose that Macbeth anticipates reflections on the continuities between aesthetic and moral judgments by modern philosophers like Iris Murdoch, Stanley Cavell, and Alexander Nehamas. It was obvious to Shakespeare and his contemporaries that writing well did not correspond to behaving well, but in Macbeth he demonstrates that freely deliberating upon the “good,” whether it be a poetical word or political deed, always risks rationally making the wrong choice. 

(Oberlin College), “Theater as Portal”

Abstract: “Mine eyes are made fools of the other senses / Or else are Worth all the rest.” So says Macbeth, reeling, as he tries to clutch a floating dagger that his murderous thoughts have conjured. Is it physically there before him, or a psychological projection, “a dagger of the mind”? This is partly a question for directors, but it is also an epistemological question. How do we know what we know, and is the ocular sense an asset or hindrance to that knowledge? In the early seventeenth century, early modern optical technologies like the telescope, camera obscura, and (soon enough) the microscope promised newfound access to the invisible and the faraway. In this talk I argue that Shakespeare’s “Globe,” too, was an ingenious technology of perception, offering glimpses of supernatural realms that natural philosophy (or science) increasingly rejected. At the same time, plays like Macbeth deliberately ambiguate the relationship between the visible and intelligible, foregrounding the contingency of human perception and understanding.

On October 25, Professors Desai and Hyman will also be holding a pedagogy workshop entitled for faculty members.

Speaker Bios:

Adhaar Noor Desai is Associate Professor of English at Bard College, NY and co-founder of the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network. He is the author of Blotted Lines: Early Modern English Literature and the Poetics of Discomposition (Cornell, 2023). 

Wendy Beth Hyman is Donald R Longman Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Chair of Book Studies at Oberlin College, OH. She is Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and author of Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry (Oxford, 2019). 

Spring 2025

Feb. 24 – March 5: Residency with visiting artist . 

Hutchison is a director, actor, and lecturer. His work covers television, film, theatre, voice-over, and radio, working for the BBC, ITV, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and Shakespeare’s Globe.

As with past residencies, he is available for class visits and workshops.