Lecture: ‘Data- Mining the Heart of Hamlet’s Mystery’

LAWRENCE — An expert on Shakespeare will give a talk exploring one of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays next week for the University of Kansas Department of English’s American/British Lecture.

Gary Taylor, a KU alumnus, will present “Data- Mining the Heart of Hamlet’s Mystery” at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 28, in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union.

His lecture will re-engage some very old questions about the play: Is Hamlet 18 or 30? Was Shakespeare the first playwright to tell his story? Why is Hamlet obsessed with his mother? Why did Hamlet not become king after his father's death? In a new way, Taylor will demonstrate how the digital humanities might help us pluck out the heart of Hamlet’s mystery.

Taylor graduated from KU with honors in English and classics in 1975. Since then, he has written or edited more than 20 books and more than 80 scholarly articles on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the history of race and the history of sexuality. He is currently Distinguished Research Professor of English at Florida State University, where he founded the History of Text Technologies program. 

He has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, given talks at theaters and universities around the world, been interviewed on Fresh Air, Salon and the BBC. He is lead general editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare, which will be published this year by Oxford University Press.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Professor Paul Outka at paul.outka@ku.edu. 

Image: Pedro Américo - Visão de Hamlet 2. Public domain, via WikiCommons.