The English department has launched Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, an online, multimedia, peer-reviewed Shakespeare journal (www.borrowers.uga.edu). Edited by faculty members 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’s use of Othello in his novel Confession, or the Blind Heart.
The journal also incorporates a cluster of shorter essays on Shakespeare festivals in the Southern U.S. Articles and reviews are enlivened by photographs-many from archives and rarely viewed-and multimedia effects such as music and links to Web resources.