The Tufts Daily

Blanding’s book challenges the integrity of Shakespeare’s work, tackling the question: Where exactly did Shakespeare get his stories? The author chalked his research up to the words of author Bill Bryson, who remarked that “Shakespeare was a wonderful teller of stories so long as someone else has told them first.”

Hedda Harari-Spencer, senior lecturer in the Department of International Literary and Cultural Studies, and the Tufts Judaic Studies Program hosted a conversation with Israeli novelist Meir Shalev on March 17. The self-proclaimed “unreliable storyteller” spoke about his literary career and his experience blending “fact and imagination.” Shalev is the winner of several Israeli literary awards and uses his lively stories to plot his way through history and into the present. 

Between discussing the forthcoming miniseries and the origins of Carroll’s narrative, the conversation dovetailed with a larger examination of race and the significance of both embracing and sharing what it means to be Black in America.