Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Writer: Suzi Wong, 706/542-7103, swong@uga.edu
Contact: Christy Desmet, 706/542-2224, cdesmet@uga.edu
Sujata Iyengar, 706/542-2679, iyengar@uga.edu

UGA celebrates launch of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation

Athens, Ga. -- On Sept. 15, the English department of the University of Georgia celebrated the launch of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, an online, multimedia, peer-reviewed Shakespeare journal (www.borrowers.uga.edu). Edited by professors Christy Desmet and Sujata Iyengar, Borrowers and Lenders publishes original scholarship from Shakespeareans with expertise in different kinds of “appropriation” or borrowing, including “reverse appropriation,” or the tendency of Shakespeare’s plays to borrow plots, characters, and motifs from other early modern writing and performance.

Borrowers presents work that contributes both to Shakespeare scholarship and to the study of whatever field or genre of appropriation with which the author engages. For example, the inaugural issue, a special issue on Shakespeare in the South, examines jazz studies, theater history, Southern studies and race studies as well as traditional areas of Shakespeare scholarship. It includes articles by Terence Hawkes on Shakespeare and The Duke, Stephen Buhler on Duke Ellington's and Billy Strayhorn's Such Sweet Thunder, Fran Teague on Swingin' The Dream, Douglas Lanier on Minstrelsy and Shakespearean Legitimation, Alan Corrigan's description of the newly rediscovered script of Swingin' the Dream, and Christy Desmet on William Gilmore Simms' use of Othello in his novel Confession, or the Blind Heart, and incorporates a cluster of shorter essays on Shakespeare festivals in the Southern United States. Articles and reviews are enlivened by photographs (many from archives and rarely viewed) and multimedia effects such as music and links to web resources.

The journal will appear biannually online, with the first general issue appearing in Nov. 2005. Special issues in the future include Shakespeare for Children (2006), Canadian Shakespeares (2007, guest-editor Daniel Fischlin), Shakespeare and Science-Fiction, and Shakespeare and Opera.

Borrowers uses the English Department’s innovative java- based editing program EMMA which eventually will enable the site to include a fully-searchable database of Shakespearean appropriations. The journal is available free of charge online, although readers can access PDF versions of the essays without illustrations and multimedia.

Editors Desmet and Iyengar thanked the UGA’s Center for the Humanities and Arts, President’s Venture Fund, Department of English and <emma> project for their generous support of the vision and production of Borrowers and Lenders. Acknowledgment also was extended to software code writer Ron Balthazor and website designer William Reeves, both of UGA.