front cover of Othello
Othello
William Shakespeare
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2022
A contemporary translation that emphasizes the racial malice at the heart of Shakespeare’s play.
 
In her update of Shakespeare’s Othello, Mfoniso Udofia engages with the racial malice at the heart of the play. Udofia’s take on this complicated story emphasizes the rhythm and lyrical patterns of Othello’s speech. Opening up the text to modern ears, Udofia presents us with a code-switched Othello.

This translation of Othello was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
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front cover of Outlawed Pigs
Outlawed Pigs
Law, Religion, and Culture in Israel
Daphne Barak-Erez
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007
     The prohibition against pigs is one of the most powerful symbols of Jewish culture and collective memory. Outlawed Pigs explores how the historical sensitivity of Jews to the pig prohibition was incorporated into Israeli law and culture. 
     Daphne Barak-Erez specifically traces the course of two laws, one that authorized municipalities to ban the possession and trading in pork within their jurisdiction and another law that forbids pig breeding throughout Israel, except for areas populated mainly by Christians. Her analysis offers a comprehensive, decade-by-decade discussion of the overall relationship between law and culture since the inception of the Israeli nation-state. 
     By examining ever-fluctuating Israeli popular opinion on Israel's two laws outlawing the trade and possession of pigs, Barak-Erez finds an interesting and accessible way to explore the complex interplay of law, religion, and culture in modern Israel, and more specifically a microcosm for the larger question of which lies more at the foundation of Israeli state law: religion or cultural tradition.
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