Our first readings

For your first reading, I'm asking you to read a short entry by Raymond Williams from Keywords. Williams was a British cultural critic influenced by Marxism; you can read a short biography about him here.

The longer assignment is "Shakespeare in America," chapter one of Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow. You can read an interview with Levine here, at a site of the Folger library devoted to the subject. (Note the links to interviews about the place of Shakespeare in the culture wars.) As you are reading it, you might think about the different ways that we value Shakespeare today.

Update: If you haven't read Huckleberry Finn lately, take a look at the chapter that Levine references: Chapter 21, here.