Lectures on Tap - "The Ghosts of Shakespeare"

Professors, experts, and storytellers giving thought-provoking lectures in Chicago bars. 📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email 🧠 Lecture: "The Ghosts of Shakespeare" 🎤 Speaker: Dr. Marek Makowski With Halloween approaching, there’s no better time to revisit Shakespeare’s plays, which are filled with ghosts haunting not only his characters’ consciences, but even the actors and audiences themselves. In this lecture, we’ll explore Shakespeare’s most prominent ghosts in works like Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III. We’ll see how these apparitions do far more than deliver scares: they challenge our understanding of reality, reveal the hidden inner lives of characters, and speak as unsettling voices of prophecy, justice, and truth. We’ll also follow the “ghost” of Shakespeare himself, tracing how he has haunted writers and performers for centuries after his death. Along the way, we’ll consider what it means for texts, fictional characters, and long-dead authors to have powerful afterlives. Dr. Marek Makowski’s essays and criticism have appeared in The New Republic, Public Books, Hyperallergic, World Literature Today, and The Chicago Tribune. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he has taught courses on contemporary writing and Shakespeare. Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌 Agenda 6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key. 6:55 PM – Host introduction 7:00 PM – Lecture begins 7:45 PM – Audience Q&A 8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round 8:30 PM – Wrap up.