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Law & Humanities Blog

Posted: 14 Apr 2011 12:05 PM PDT

Barkun, Michael, Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

Cook, Patrick J., Cinematic Hamlet: The Films of Olivier, Zeffirelli, Branagh, and Almereyda (Ohio University Press, 2011).

Godfrey, Emelyne, Masculinity, Crime, and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Guarino, Gabriel, Representing the King's Splendour: Communication and Reception of Symbolic Forms of Power in Viceregal Naples (Manchester University Press, distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

McLoughlin, Kate, Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the "Iliad" to Iraq (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Pearson, Ellen Holmes, Remaking Custom: Law and Identity in the Early American Republic (University of Virginia Press, 2011).

Steinberg, Jonthan, Bismark: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Vucetic, Srdjan, The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations (Stanford University Press, 2011).

Sleeping Not Advised

Posted: 14 Apr 2011 07:40 AM PDT

Punchdrunk, the innovative (and interactive) theater company, has brought a new version of Macbeth (that well-known Elizabethan murder fest) to New York's West 27th Street, renamed it "Sleep No More," and invited in the audience. Or perhaps one should say, "Sleep No More" is a derivative work, notes New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley, who describes it as "a largely wordless production...not without thought-churning aperçus. These have less to do with the comely dancers who act out the doomed paths of Macbeth and company than with those clumsy, anonymous lugs in white face masks who keep elbowing one another out of the way to get a better view of the sex and violence. That's you and me, my fellow theatergoers." Yes, the audience is unmasked, and the players are sometimes, well, in the alltogether. Without masks, as it were.

Counsels Mr. Brantley, "An unimpaired sense of balance and depth perception is crucial to attending "Sleep No More," which leads its audience on a merry, macabre chase up and down stairs, and through minimally illuminated, furniture-cluttered rooms and corridors. The creative team here has taken on the duties of messing with your head, which they do just as thoroughly as any artificial stimulant." More here from his piece (subscription may be required).