Becoming Cleopatra http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Becoming-Cleopatra-Francesca-Royster/9781403961099

Cleopatra. Sexy, sultry, political, and racially ambiguous. Moving from Shakespeare's England to contemporary Los Angeles, Francesca Royster looks at the performance of race and sexuality in wide range of portrayals of that icon of dangerous female sexuality, Cleopatra. Royster begins with Shakespeare's original appropriation of Plutarch, and then moves on to analyse performances of the Cleopatra icon by Josephine Baker, Elizabeth Taylor, Pam Grier (Cleopatra Jones) and Queen Latifah (in "Set It Off"). Royster argues that Cleopatra highlights a larger cultural anxiety about women, sexuality, and race.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Part I: Cleopatra in Hollywood-Constructing and Deconstructing Whiteness - African Dreams, Egyptian Nightmares: Cleopatra and Becoming England - Cleopatra and the Birth of Film: Staging Perpetual Motion - Egyptian Sandals: Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra and the White Grotesque - Part II: Cleopatra and Counter-narratives of Adoption - Cleopatra Jones (1973): Blaxploitation and Tactical Alliances with Shakespeare - Queering Cleo: Set it Off and Queen Latifah's 'Butch-in-the-Hood'

About the Author

FRANCESCA ROYSTER is Associate Professor of English at DePaul University, where she teaches courses on Shakespeare, film, and black feminism. She is one of the leading young African American feminist Shakespeare scholars.

Reviews

."..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 T"he Acoustic World of Early Modern England and Shakespeare and Masculinity"