From:     Ian McCormick <ian.mccormick@hotmail.co.uk>

Date:      May 8 at 5:31 PM EDT

Subject:  Book Announcement: Shakespeare: New Voices

In Shakespeare: New Voices a diverse range of contributors were asked to rethink, reframe, and re-contextualize Shakespeare’s drama in relation to contemporary debates across the academy and public discourse. Accordingly, this new collection presents a variety of new voices emerging out of contemporary Shakespeare and performance studies in the wider context of a global age of culture wars, identity politics, digital transformation, and pedagogic innovation.

Shakespeare: New Voices is a bold and necessary collection for our times. It not only examines Shakespeare’s place in twenty-first-century culture but also interrogates the role that literature, performance, and theory can play in social justice movements, intensifying culture wars, and emancipatory pedagogy.

In an era marked by global unrest, heightened attention to social justice, and a backlash against “wokeness,” Shakespeare’s drama persists as a cultural cornerstone and serves as point of common reference; the plays create a forum for debate and contestation, and opportunities for creative appropriation and adaptation. At one extreme, we find the Shakespeare Idol (Bardolatry); at the other the critique of transcendence and universalist claims, and a more nuanced exploration of forms of inclusion and exclusion within global Shakespeare studies.

With accessibility, originality, and meticulous scholarship as key guiding principles, this volume provides a pluralistic account of Shakespeare’s place in contemporary social and cultural life.

CONTENTS

1   Voices of Resistance and Renewal

Ian McCormick

2   Shakespeare, Social Justice and the Struggle for Relevance

Ananya Dhawan Deol

3   The International Ramifications of Antonio’s Debt

Alex Flores

4   “Mislike me not for my complexion”: Black Characters in Shakespeare’s Plays

E. Kalu Amah

5   Rewriting Caliban and Epistemic Struggle: A Postcolonial Reading Across Texts.

Chijioke Izuegbunem

6   “I Grant I am a Woman”: Gender Inequity, Women’s Non-Traditional Casting, and Why Modern Shakespeare Should be “Woke”

Emily Pickett

7   Class Agenda? Radicals and Reactionaries on Stage/in the Classroom

Lisa Gould-Crooke

8   Teaching Shakespeare Insults First: A Case for Practical Shakespeare Introductions

Savannah Xaver

9   “The Milk of Human Kindness”

Jessica Tooker

10   Trauma, PTSD to Recovery: Exploring the Journey of Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes through the Lens of Optimality Theory

Kanak Kanti Bera and Sovan Tripathy

11   Shattered Mirrors: the Consequences of Narcissism in Shakespeare’s Parent-Child Relationships

Aglaia Maretta Venters

12   Shedding New Light and Meaning in the Field of Shakespearean Canon: Reconstructing an Ecological Perspective

Shantanu Siuli

13   Fixing Shakespeare, Breaking America: Translation, Turmoil, and the American Cultural Divide

Cason Murphy

14   Nikos Velmos’s New Voice for Cleopatra: Rewriting Shakespeare from the Margins of Interwar Greece (1924)

Dimitra V. Dalpanagioti

15   Mimicry, Androgyny and the Biological Roots of Rosalind’s Strategy

Catherine Diamond

16   Performative Dissonance: Shakespeare, Drag, and the Legal Regulation of Identity

Max Barrett

17   “The Quality of Mercy is Not Strained”: Using Fanfiction to Teach and Understand The Merchant of Venice in an Era of Hate

Allison Duque

18   Remaking and Reshaping Shakespeare through Fan Fiction

Bethany Smith

19   Witchcraft as Statecraft: Women’s Agency in The Hollow Crown’s Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henriad

Susan Kendrick 

20   Shakespearean Voodooism in Ray Bradbury’s “The Small Assassin”: Serendipitous Appropriation and Modernization of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

Nancy Ann Watanabe

21   From Flesh to Puppet: Performance and Evolutionary Adaptation in Boğaziçi Performing Arts Ensemble’s Master Shakespeare

Gökçe Yetkin

ISBN: ‎ 979-8255328079

Birmingham: Quibble Academic

326pp £12.99

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GYRM5VCW

Dr Ian McCormick

From:     Elena Pellone <lenavision@live.com>

Date:      May 7 at 9:07 AM EDT

Subject:  Book announcement 

Dear SHAKSPEReans,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my monograph: Directorless Shakespeare: Transformations through collective Embodied Literary Criticism (Routledge, 2025).

https://www.routledge.com/Directorless-Shakespeare-Transformations-through-collective-Embodied-Literary-Criticism/Pellone/p/book/9781032771885

Challenging received scholarship on the practice of Shakespeare’s theatre, this book displaces a contemporary cultural bias towards leadership models to reconsider possibilities of working in a non-hierarchical and inclusive creative theatrical practice. It offers ways of restoring to actors a sense of what the existentialists termed “autonomy” that Shakespeare’s company would have embodied. Against a critical account of two major Shakespeare playhouses—Shakespeare’s Globe, London and the American Shakespeare Center—the book describes the original practice-based research by Anərkē Shakespeare and Venice Shakespeare Company without a controlling director. Their staging of three directorless Shakespeare plays, and his narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, with diverse actors, performance spaces, languages and countries, explores multilingual, intersectional, cross-disciplinary and international possibilities of early modern performance and study. Directorless Shakespeare as “Embodied Literary Criticism” releases the dialogical forces of Shakespeare’s texts, which are more fully served by the centrifugal force of the collective ensemble rather than the centripetal force of the single director. It allows texts to speak fully and multiply, in democratic exchange with an audience, liberated from directorial or theoretically driven concepts.

From:     Alexa Alice Joubin <ajoubin@email.gwu.edu>

Date:      April 16 at 4:14 PM EDT

Subject:  Barbara Hodgdon Award and Screening Shakespeare

Professor Alexa Alice Joubin received the Shakespeare Association of America’s (SAA) Barbara Hodgdon Award at the 2026 annual conference in Denver, USA. Her “The Great Globe Itself: An Introduction to Shakespeare in Heterotopia” (PDF) in her book Contemporary Readings in Global Performances of Shakespeare received the Barbara Hodgdon Award which “recognizes work that is innovative in method and scope and that opens up new avenues of inquiry in the field of performance.”

Joubin’s “Introduction to Shakespeare in Heterotopia” outlines new methodologies for the study of global Shakespeare through the notion of heterotopia—a concept, proposed by Michel Foucault, that describes worlds within worlds, or cultural spaces that are transformative because of their contradictory or trans-historical ideologies. Artists and audiences project their beliefs onto Shakespearean narratives to create hybrid worlds across cultures and history. Since the fictional space created by performance juxtaposes multiple worlds, this space—a microcosm of different temporalities and worlds—has multiple layers of cultural meanings.

Additionally, Joubin’s open-access Screening Shakespeare (https://screenshakespeare.org) received an honorable mention of the SAA’s Publics Award which “recognizes pioneering and culturally significant efforts to engage broad and diverse Shakespeare publics through teaching, scholarship, performance and activism.” Screening Shakespeare is a permanently free, interactive, multimedia textbook. It features a community-centered, multilingual, embedded AI tailored for public education.

Certified by Quality Matters, the project is now part of the OER Commons repository of peer-reviewed, Creative Commons openly-licensed resources. The website covers key concepts of Shakespearean mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound and music, and film theory, and is designed for multimodal, equitable access, even functioning as an audio book.

From:     Jessica Tvordi <tvordi@suu.edu>

Date:      April 7 at 8:04 PM EDT

Subject:  CFP: Wooden O Symposium 

 August 3-5, 2026

Southern Utah University - Utah Shakespeare Festival

The Wooden O Symposium is a cross-disciplinary conference exploring the impact of Shakespeare’s plays on culture and history, from his time to the present. This face-to-face conference aims to foster research in the field of Shakespeare Studies and to provide connections between academia and professional theatre productions through our partnership with the Utah Shakespeare Festival. The Wooden O Symposium limits participation to 25 presenters to ensure robust conversation and feedback as we strive to create a community of scholars engaged with the work of Shakespeare.

Our 2026 keynote speaker is Dr. Daniel Vitkus, Rebeca Hickel Endowed Chair in Elizabethan Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

We invite proposals for presentations on any topic relating to Shakespeare and his plays, including:

• Shakespeare and Adaptation
• Shakespeare in Performance
• Shakespeare and History, Culture, and Society
• Shakespeare and Rhetoric
• Shakespeare and the Arts
• Shakespeare and his Global Contemporaries
• Theoretical Approaches

We also encourage papers and presentations speaking to the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2026 summer season: Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night. Conference registration includes 1 ticket to Troilus and Cressida and 1 to Hamlet, as well as 50% off any USF ticket from August 3-5 for you and your guests.

The deadline for proposals is May 1, 2026. Please include a 200-250-word abstract and the following information:

name of presenter

• participant category (faculty, graduate student, or independent scholar)
• college/university affiliation
• email address
• audio/visual requirements and any other special requests.

All abstracts should be submitted through the following link: 2026 Wooden O Symposium Submission Form

For more information, please contact the conference co-organizers, Scott Knowles at scottknowles@suu.edu or Jessica Tvordi at tvordi@suu.edu.

From:     Darren Freebury-Jones <Darren_F.J@hotmail.co.uk>

Date:      April 7 at 2:31 PM EDT

Subject:  The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd: Volume 2

Dear SHAKSPERians,

April 7 marks publication day for The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd: Volume Two.

This volume provides detailed cases for an expanded Kyd canon, including collaborations with Shakespeare.

Further information can be found in the two links below:

https://boydellandbrewer.com/book/the-collected-works-of-thomas-kyd-9781843846956/?v=7885444af42e

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/feb/24/plays-16th-century-playwright-thomas-kyd-double-new-edition

Darren Freebury-Jones.

From:     Darren Freebury-Jones <Darren_F.J@hotmail.co.uk>

Date:      April 7 at 2:26 PM EDT

Subject:  Amussen and Freebury-Jones

Dear SHAKSPERians,

I recently enjoyed speaking with historian Susan Dwyer Amussen about Shakespeare and our respective books Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers and What’s in a Name?

You can book tickets to stream our online conversation here: https://www.fane.co.uk/susan-darren

Darren Freebury-Jones.

From:     Darren Freebury-Jones <darren_f.j@hotmail.co.uk>

Date:      March 17 at 4:20 AM EDT

Subject:  Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers

Dear SHAKSPERians,

The paperback edition of my book SHAKESPEARE’S BORROWED FEATHERS: HOW EARLY MODERN PLAYWRIGHTS SHAPED THE WORLD’S GREATEST WRITER is now published.

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526177346/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Borrowed-Feathers-Playwrights-Greatest/dp/152617734X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0 

Darren Freebury-Jones

From:     Sean Kevin Lawrence <sean.lawrence@ubc.ca>

Date:      March 14 at 10:27 PM EDT

Subject:  In Memoriam Jay Halio

Dear SHAKSPEReans, 

I thought you might be interested to know of Professor Halio’s passing.

https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/cas/news-events/news/2026/march/in-memoriam-jay-halio/

Yours, 

Sean Lawrence.

From:     Stephanie Chamberlain <sechamberlain@semo.edu>

Date:      March 10 at 10:08 AM EDT

Subject:  Book Announcement

Dear SHAKSPEReans,

I am pleased to announcement the publication of my volume, ‘What Country, Friends, Is This?’: Shakespeare and the Staging of Exile, co-edited with Vanessa I. Corredera, Baylor University and James M. Sutton, Florida International University by ACMRS Press. 

 Stephanie

From:     Stephanie Chamberlain <sechamberlain@semo.edu>

Date:      March 5 at 11:17 AM EST

Subject:  CFP: Journal of the Wooden O

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Journal of the Wooden O (JWO) is a peer-reviewed academic publication focusing on Shakespeare studies. The editors invite papers on topics related to Shakespeare, including Shakespearean texts, Shakespeare in performance, the adaptation of Shakespeare works (film, fiction, and visual and performing arts), Elizabethan and Jacobean culture and history, and Shakespeare’s contemporaries.

The JWO is published annually by Southern Utah University Press in connection with the Gerald R. Sherratt Library and the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Articles published in the JWO are indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, World Shakespeare Bibliography and appear full-text in EBSCO Academic Search Premiere.

Selected papers from the annual Wooden O Symposium are also considered for publication.

SUBMISSIONS: Manuscripts should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 17^th edition. Manuscript submissions should generally be between 4000-8000 words in length. Please review the JWO Style Sheet, which may be found at https://www.suu.edu/library/wooden-o.html. The deadline for submission is October 16, 2026. Authors should include all of the following information on a separate page with their submission:

• Author’s name
• Manuscript title
• Mailing address
• Email address
• Daytime phone number

Submit electronic copy to: woodeno@suu.edu (Only .doc, .docx or .rtf files will be accepted.)

For more information, contact:

Journal of the Wooden O

c/o Southern Utah University Press

351 W. University Blvd.

Cedar City, Utah 84720

435.586.1955

woodeno@suu.edu

From:     Mark Bradbeer <bradbeer56@gmail.com>

Date:      March 2 at 7:24 PM EST

Subject:  Book Announcement

New Book on Shakespeare’s Sonnets 

There are two different writing styles in Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609). A minority of the 154 sonnets employ the ‘you’ second-person address mode (instead of ‘thou’).

In my new book, I make the case that these styles are indicative of two poets (Sonnet 83.14). Whereas Shakespeare used ‘thou’, his Rival used ‘you’.

My approach suggests that Shakespeare’s mistress, commonly called the Dark Lady (Sonnet 127), was also a rival for their patron’s affections. It is her tender voice that enters the series at Sonnet 13. It was her humble voice which rhetorically asked: Was Shakespeare’s “spirit, by spirits, taught to write above the mortal pitch?” (Sonnet 86.5-6). Inadvertently, this resolves the problematic search for a rival poet who was better than Shakespeare.

There is much more new information revealed by using this Two-Poet hypothesis. My book, Aemilia Lanyer as Shakespeare’s Rival Poet: The Narrative of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Routledge, 2026), is now available for order and delivery later this year.

This research supports the thesis of my earlier book, Aemilia Lanyer as Shakespeare’s Co-Author (Routledge, 2022), which is now available in the less expensive format of paperback or ebook.

From:     Alexa Alice Joubin <ajoubin@email.gwu.edu>

Date:      February 24 at 11:17 AM EST

Subject:  CFP: Virtuality, Embodiment, and AI

Virtuality, Embodiment, and AI

Critical AI

Duke University Press Journal

This is a call for papers for a special issue edited by Professor Alexa Alice Joubin, entitled “Virtuality, Embodiment, and Meaning-Making in AI Technologies.” We publish on a rolling basis (no fixed deadline), and welcome 250-word abstracts.

Some of the key questions to consider are:

• What is the relationship between word, embodiment, and the world?
• How can we theorize new modes of AI-infused sociality, including the advent of personified chatbots?
• How do ineffable, embodied experiences differ from or overlap with the datasets that LLMs and other AI systems leverage?
• How might the line of criticism of AI as lacking embodied cognition be strengthened or re-appraised?

This special issue defines the two key words as follows:

Embodiment refers to (1) tangible forms of abstract ideas and (2) the lived materiality in which physical bodies and their interactions with the world shape personal experiences and identities. 

Virtuality refers to the interplay between material objects and meaning making—an interplay that under certain socio-technical and material conditions gives both fiction and the outputs of generative AI their world-making capacities.

For example, the contextual use of a costume piece made of vinyl fabric, craft foam, and metallic paint in a film determines its dramatic property as heavy iron armor.

We invite 250-word proposals for a range of essays, from short think pieces of 1,500 to 3,000 words to essays of 5,000 to 8,000 words. Please send 250-word abstracts to Alexa Alice Joubin at ajoubin@gwu.edu

For details, please refer to https://criticalai.org/2026/02/17/cai-special-series-cfp-virtuality-embodiment-and-meaning-making-in-ai-technologies/.

From:     Alexa Alice Joubin <ajoubin@email.gwu.edu>

Date:      February 24 at 11:17 AM EST

Subject:  CFP: Virtuality, Embodiment, and AI

Virtuality, Embodiment, and AI

Critical AI

Duke University Press Journal

This is a call for papers for a special issue edited by Professor Alexa Alice Joubin, entitled “Virtuality, Embodiment, and Meaning-Making in AI Technologies.” We publish on a rolling basis (no fixed deadline), and welcome 250-word abstracts.

Some of the key questions to consider are:

• What is the relationship between word, embodiment, and the world?
• How can we theorize new modes of AI-infused sociality, including the advent of personified chatbots?
• How do ineffable, embodied experiences differ from or overlap with the datasets that LLMs and other AI systems leverage?
• How might the line of criticism of AI as lacking embodied cognition be strengthened or re-appraised?

This special issue defines the two key words as follows:

Embodiment refers to (1) tangible forms of abstract ideas and (2) the lived materiality in which physical bodies and their interactions with the world shape personal experiences and identities. 

Virtuality refers to the interplay between material objects and meaning making—an interplay that under certain socio-technical and material conditions gives both fiction and the outputs of generative AI their world-making capacities.

For example, the contextual use of a costume piece made of vinyl fabric, craft foam, and metallic paint in a film determines its dramatic property as heavy iron armor.

We invite 250-word proposals for a range of essays, from short think pieces of 1,500 to 3,000 words to essays of 5,000 to 8,000 words. Please send 250-word abstracts to Alexa Alice Joubin at ajoubin@gwu.edu

For details, please refer to https://criticalai.org/2026/02/17/cai-special-series-cfp-virtuality-embodiment-and-meaning-making-in-ai-technologies/.

From:     Rachel Wifall <rwifall@saintpeters.edu>

Date:      February 9 at 4:01 PM EST

Subject:  CFP: Echoes of Shakespeare

Dear SHAKSPEReans,

Please see the call for papers, Echoes of Shakespeare: Intertextual Dialogues Across Centuries.

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/literature/special_issues/7099MS9755

Rachel Wifall, Ph.D.

From:     Robert Stagg <rstagg@tamu.edu>

Date:      February 2 at 1:46 PM EST

Subject:  NVS conference bulletin

The New Variorum Shakespeare is hosting a two-day conference about A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale, the two texts we have recently published in variorum format online. The conference will take place 10-11 February 2026. A schedule is enclosed below. The Zoom links for those wishing to follow remotely are available on our website at https://newvariorumshakespeare.org/news/

Please send any questions to the NVS’s Director, Dr. Robert Stagg: rstagg@tamu.edu

TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY

10:00 Welcome and introduction (Troy Bickham, Robert Stagg)

10:15 New Variorum Shakespeare: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’

Chair: Laura Mandell

Discussants: Roberta Barker, Kris May, David Nicol, Lena Orlin, Eric Rasmussen, Bryan Tarpley, Dorothy Todd, Katayoun Torabi, Paul Werstine

11:30 Text, Editing, History, Theater History

Chair: Eric Rasmussen

Discussants: Peter Holland, Tiffany Stern, Paul Werstine

13:00 Lunch 

14:00 Gender, Sexuality, Desire

Chair: Robert Stagg

Discussants: Mario DiGangi, Eric Rasmussen, Melissa Sanchez, Valerie Traub 

15:30 Genre, Style, Art, Artifice

Chair: Melissa Sanchez

Discussants: Katie Adkison, Mario DiGangi, Curry Kennedy, Whitney Sperrazza, Robert Stagg

17:00 Conclusion of discussions

WEDNESDAY 11 FEBRUARY

10:00 Earliness, Lateness, Time [zoom only]

Chair: Jessica Chiba

Discussants: Urvashi Chakravarty, Rory Loughnane, Gordon McMullan, Goran Stanivukovic 

11:30 Power, Hierarchy, Hospitality, Environment

Chair: Margaret Ezell

Discussants: Katherine Steele Brokaw, Ruben Espinosa, Sujata Iyengar, Peter Kirwan, Lena Orlin, Valerie Traub

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Performance

Chair: Alexandra LaGrand

Discussants: Katherine Steele Brokaw, Peter Holland, Sujata Iyengar, Peter Kirwan

15:30 Miscellaneous discussion session

Chairs: Ruben Espinosa, Tiffany Stern, Nancy Warren

17:00 Conclusion of discussions; closing remarks (Robert Stagg, Paul Werstine)