Dr. Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University, discusses Shakespeare’s own migration to the U.S. — including to the Folger Shakespeare Library — alongside stories of migration within his works. Juxtaposing the spread of Shakespeare’s works alongside the geographies of his plays raises questions about immigration and citizenship in our own age of mass movement. What would happen if we understood the journeys in Shakespeare’s plays less as remnants from medieval romance and more presciently in the light of exile, diaspora, and forced migration? Smith’s talk will focus on the play The Book of Sir Thomas More, to which we know Shakespeare contributed a speech in his own hand, alongside Othello and Twelfth Night, to discuss identity, displacement, prejudice, and the figure of the “good immigrant” across the long life of Shakespeare’s plays.