Many contemporary engagements with Shakespeare’s works operate at the intersection between translation and adaptation and do not fit easily into either category. This collection brings together the fields of adaptation studies and translation studies—both of which have been central to discussions of Shakespeare’s afterlives—to explore the value of tradaptation as a hybrid critical framework. Coined by Michel Garneau to describe the versions of Shakespeare’s works that he created at the height of the Québec nationalist movement, the term tradaptation is especially relevant to contexts in which language debates are fraught and bound up with national, colonial, and racial politics. This book thus emphasizes the political dimensions of this artistic phenomenon, situating it within ongoing conversations about the complex roles that Shakespeare continues to play within decolonial movements and struggles for linguistic justice.

Katherine Gillen is Professor of English at Texas A&M University–San Antonio, USA. She is the author of Chaste Value: Economic Crisis, Female Chastity, and the Production of Social Difference on Shakespeare’s Stage (2017). With Kathryn Vomero Santos and Adrianna M. Santos, she co-edited the three-volume anthology, The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera (2023, 2024, and 2026). She is also working on a monograph that examines Shakespeare’s use of classical sources within the context of emerging racial capitalism.

Kathryn Vomero Santos is Associate Professor of English at Trinity University, USA. Santos is the author of Shakespeare in Tongues (2025) and the co-editor of several books, including The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera, Volumes 1–3 (2023, 2024, and 2026) and The Ethical Implications of Shakespeare in Performance and Appropriation (2024). She is currently at work on a new book about the figure of Sycorax and her many afterlives.