Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon (Paperback)
Description
Cleopatra is one of our icons of “exotic” femininity. Sexy, political, and racially ambiguous--since the time of Shakespeare she has been a central character in popular culture. And, more often than not, Cleopatra has been imagined as the epitome of dangerous female sexuality. Moving fluidly from Shakespeare's England to contemporary Los Angeles, Francesca Royster looks at the performance of race and sexuality in a wide range of portrayals of Cleopatra. Royster begins with Shakespeare's original appropriation of Plutarch, and then moves on to analyze performances of the Cleopatra icon by Josephine Baker, and the on screen performances of Elizabeth Taylor, Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones), and Queen Latifah (in Set It Off).
About the Author
Francesca T. Royster is Associate Professor of English at DePaul University, where she writes and teaches courses on Shakespeare, film, and black feminism. She lives in Chicago.
Praise for Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon…
"...a dense but readable book, especially appropriate for women in film courses."--Publishers Weekly Annex, 7/21/03
"Like its subject, Becoming Cleopatra is provocative and endlessly fascinating; unlike her, it is ultimately satisfying. At last we have a book as witty, complex and liberating as Cleopatra herself." - Kim F. Hall, Thomas F. X. Mullarkey Chair in Literature, Fordham University
"Starting with Josephine Baker in the 1920s and extending to the search for a racially recognizable villain after 9/11, Royster blurs the boundaries between history and the present, between the academy and popular culture, between critical analysis and personal testimony. In this thoroughly engaging book 'Cleopatra' loses its fixity as a noun and becomes a verb." - Bruce R. Smith, author of The Acoustic World of Early Modern England and Shakespeare and Masculinity
