Scott W. Stern

There Is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas by Scott W. Stern is a sweeping study of sexual assault trials in the Jim Crow South that details the racial and economic inequities of rape law and highlights the resistance of ordinary women. In the early years of the twentieth century, Mississippi County, Arkansas, was both brutal and profitable. This region, home...

She is more violent than Lady Macbeth, more complex than Ophelia, more strategic than King Lear's daughters. She is the only Shakespearean character, male or female, whose entire life—from youth to old age—appears on stage. She offers a wealth of insight into Shakespeare's understanding of, and influence on, ideas of gender and sexuality, and she speaks by far the most...