Presenters
Kelsey Ridge
Abstract
One can hardly have a conversation about significant stories in modern western literature without mentioning Shakespeare. Why we obsess about a 16th-century poet is the question that haunts our discipline. We spout clichés about Shakespeare’s universality or its deep and inherent artistic merit. Really, Shakespeare is a known quantity that can be adjusted contextually in the service of an agenda: it is a franchise, like the Purge movies. This paper will examine the cultural fixation on Shakespeare, including its perpetual placement on stage and as an academic subject, through the lens of media franchises.