Tricky Translations: Shakespeare’s “Nachreife” in Contemporary Serial TV Drama

The Department of German at NYU and Deutsches Haus at NYU present a talk by Professor Elisabeth Bronfen who will speak on Tricky Translations. Shakespeare’s Nachreife in Contemporary Serial TV Drama.

Using the critical tropes developed by Walter Benjamin in his thoughts on translation, this lecture will explore issues of translatability regarding the resurfacing of Shakespearean Drama in contemporary serial TV. How does Hamlet resurface in Westworld? What does it mean for the image of the first female president that, in House of Cards, Claire Underwood should take her self-fashioning from Lady Macbeth’s playbook? What notion of reparation is at issue, if we think about Elizabeth Keane’s resignation in Homeland in terms of the banishment of Queen Margaret at the end of Richard III?