Brian Carroll: About the Artist



Click here to listen to his interview.
Brian Carroll is a Professor of Communication and Chair of the Communication Department at Berry College, He has just published Shakespeare’s Sceptered Isle: Finding English National Identity in the Plays
More than a dozen years in development, the book searches Shakespeare’s history and Roman plays to find the raw materials of English national consciousness and identity. According to Carroll, the messages of Shakespeare’s history plays are not principally the plots or “facts” of the dramas but the attitudes and imaginings they elicited in audiences.
Carroll’s 8th book argues that Shakespeare’s histories furnished modern England with a curriculum for constructing a national identity, a confidence of language and culture, and a powerful new medium through which to communicate and express this negotiated identity.
By applying semiotics, the book studies the playwright’s use of symbols, metonymy, symbolic codes, and metaphor. By examining what Shakespeare and playgoers remembered and forgot, as well as the ways ideas were framed, this book explores how a national identity was crafted, contested, and circulated.
Brian Carroll is a Professor of Communication and Chair of the Communication Department at Berry College, He has just published Shakespeare’s Sceptered Isle: Finding English National Identity in the Plays
More than a dozen years in development, the book searches Shakespeare’s history and Roman plays to find the raw materials of English national consciousness and identity. According to Carroll, the messages of Shakespeare’s history plays are not principally the plots or “facts” of the dramas but the attitudes and imaginings they elicited in audiences.
Carroll’s 8th book argues that Shakespeare’s histories furnished modern England with a curriculum for constructing a national identity, a confidence of language and culture, and a powerful new medium through which to communicate and express this negotiated identity.
By applying semiotics, the book studies the playwright’s use of symbols, metonymy, symbolic codes, and metaphor. By examining what Shakespeare and playgoers remembered and forgot, as well as the ways ideas were framed, this book explores how a national identity was crafted, contested, and circulated.
The book officially launches at the Wooden O Symposium at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah, in early August. Carroll has chaired the Department of Communication since 2015; he joined the Berry faculty in 2003. He is the author of eight books, including two on the history of Black press involvement in the integration of baseball: When to Stop the Cheering? The Black Press, the Black Community and the Integration of Professional Baseball (Routledge, 2007) and A Devil’s Bargain: The Black Press and Black Baseball 1915-1955 (Routledge, 2014).
The book officially launches at the Wooden O Symposium at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah, in early August. Carroll has chaired the Department of Communication since 2015; he joined the Berry faculty in 2003. He is the author of eight books, including two on the history of Black press involvement in the integration of baseball: When to Stop the Cheering? The Black Press, the Black Community and the Integration of Professional Baseball (Routledge, 2007) and A Devil’s Bargain: The Black Press and Black Baseball 1915-1955 (Routledge, 2014).