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SF/SOS annual conference proposal deadline Aug. 1, 2011

Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman asked us to share this request for papers for the Shakespeare Fellowship/Shakespeare Oxford Society conference to be held Oct. 13-16, 2011 at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, D.C. Deadline for proposals is Aug. 1, 2011.
The 2011  joint authorship conference  sponsored by  the Shakespeare Oxford Society and the Shakespeare Fellowship will be held in Washington DC from October 13-16, 2011. Arrangements for a block of rooms at the Washington Court Hotel  are being finalized. The program will include a tour of the Folger Shakespeare Library  with a viewing and discussion of the Earl of Oxford's Geneva Bible. The SOS and SF are organizations dedicated to academic excellence, as defined through the independent scholarship of several generations of scholars, among them J.T. Looney, B.R. and B.M. Ward, Charles Wisner Barrell, Charlton Ogburn, Jr., Ruth Loyd Miller, and Mark Anderson, among others.
The primary focus of both organizations is to consider and advance the case already argued by these and other writers identifying Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true mind behind the mask of "Shakespeare." Although papers exploring alternative authorship theories (e.g., Mary Sidney, Francis Bacon, etc.) are welcome, presenters should bear in mind that conference attendees are for the most part well versed in the arguments for and against Oxford's authorship as presented in these seminal works. Those desiring an audience for alternative authorship scenarios, or writing from an orthodox "Stratfordian" perspective, should prepare themselves by carefully considering the expectations of their audience. Please weigh the arguments for Oxford's authorship and construct your own arguments in relationship to them.
  1. The default time slot for all presentations will be 45 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions and answers. All presentations will have a question and answer section. If you are not able to condense the essentials of your argument
    1. to a 45-minute time frame, you may request more time from the committee, but additional time will only be granted to proposals that, in the opinion of the committee, are especially deserving of more extended 
    1. consideration by conference attendees.
  2. Send an abstract of no more than 250 words to the committee and a brief biography before August 1, 2011.
  3. If you have not previously presented at an SOS, SF, or Concordia, conference, we welcome your submission. However, you are also requested to send a draft of your presentation, either as a Word document or PowerPoint presentation, to the committee by the August 1 deadline.
  4. Academic presentations, ideally construed, are acts of persuasion. It goes without saying that all papers should be grounded in a clearly identifiable thesis supported by examples or evidence. Proposals that do not 
    1. fit this criteria are unlikely to be accepted for presentation.
  5. If you have previously presented a topic that you believe deserves continued attention by the Oxfordian community, please consider presenting it again if you have a fresh layer of argument or evidence to present.
  6. In the past, papers concerning cryptograms and codes have proven particularly problematic within the anti-Stratfordian community. Anyone interested in presenting an argument that involves cryptological evidence will be expected to show that his or her proof fulfills the criteria for validity advanced by William F. and Elizebeth S. Friedman's classic The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (1957).
To submit a paper or for further information contact: John Hamill mailto:hamillx@pacbell.net, Earl Showerman mailto:earlees@charter.net, Bonner Cutting mailto:jandbcutting@comcast.net. 

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