Lecture

Profs and Pints Philadelphia presents: “Sex with Shakespeare,” a surprising look at how the Bard thought about gender and sexuality and how it influenced his works, with Abdulhamit Arvas, scholar and historian of sexuality and assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Before “gender” became a culture-war keyword, London audiences watched William Shakespeare’s plays with an open secret: Because women were barred from the public stage, every Juliet, Desdemona, and Rosalind was played by a boy actor. What did that theatrical reality do to ideas of masculinity, femininity, desire—and to the plays themselves? Hear such questions tackled in