“Shakespeare for All Times and Peoples”: Shakespeare at Spelman College and the Atlanta University Center

In this paper I explore what it means to require Shakespeare at a historically black college by looking at Adrienne Herndon's 1906 essay “Shakespeare at Atlanta University” and W. E. B. Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk. Despite the frequent association of Shakespeare requirements with a conservative agenda, both Herndon and Du Bois imagine possibilities for powerful politics in the performance and study of Shakespeare. Reading these two texts together suggests that teaching, studying, and performing Shakespeare might still be powerful politics at black institutions.