SASC Conference

Mark your calendars for the next (the 16th) Annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, to be held April 12-14, 2012. It should be a great (and informative) time, as usual for this Conference.

Here is a posting by Professor Daniel Wright, director of the Shakespeare Authorship Research Center (SARC) and leader of the Conference:

Friends,

It’s nearing that time – spring time! – conference time! – once again!

The 16^th Annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference at Concordia University will convene for three days from April 12 through April 14 this year. Sessions will run from 6pm – 9pm on Thursday the 12^th; from 9am – 5pm on Friday the 13^th; and from 9am – 5pm on Saturday the 14^th. Registration is $165.

This year, the university’s Vero Nihil Verius Award for Distinguished Scholarship will be conferred on Katherine Chiljan for her outstanding new study, Shakespeare Suppressed: The Uncensored Truth About Shakespeare and His Works; as well as to Prof Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky for their acclaimed peer-reviewed work in authoritatively establishing the origins and date of Shakespeare’sTempest. The Vero Nihil Verius Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Shakespearean Arts will be conferred on journalist, investigator and author Al Austin (of 1989’s Frontline program, The Shakespeare Mystery, fame). Al’s new book, The Cottage (a work inspired by his own investigations at and near Castle Hedingham), as well as Katherine’s, will be available for purchase and signing by the authors, as well.

You can register for all the fun at https://acme.cu-portland.edu/ecomm/shakespeare/. A number of fine lodging choices are available at http://www.authorshipstudies.org/conference/accomodation.cfm.

Thursday evening’s agenda will feature Cybele Gontar on “A Shakespearean Primer on the Decorative Arts”; Angela Davis on “Approaches to Teaching the Authorship Question” (with an accompanying film); Sylvia Crowley Holmes on “Dick Roe’s Italy”; and Prof Daniel Wright on “’The Lost Royal Child Recovered’ in Shakespeare’s Plays.”

Friday’s program will feature Katherine Chiljan on “The Importance of Chester’s Love’s Martyr on the Authorship Question”; Prof Roger Stritmatter on “Forensic Paleography and the Authorship Question: The Strange New Case of the Annotated Seneca”; Prof Michael Delahoyde on “Oxfordian Twelfth Night Epiphanies; and Dr Earl Showerman on “Shakespeare’s Medicine: A 21^st-Century Quest for the Author.”

Saturday’s program, prior to the awards ceremony, will feature William Ray’s “The Suits of Woe: Hamlet’s Unquiet Soul”; Richard Whalen on “The Hybrid Weird Sisters in Macbeth: Greek Prophetesses as Comical Scottish Witches”; Lynne Kositsky and Prof Roger Stritmatter on “The Tempest and the Authorship Question: Critiquing the Critics”; and Al Austin on “Something Rotten.” The day’s presentation will conclude with Alex McNeil “emcee-ing” what promises to be an exciting round of Oxfordian Jeopardy featuring students from Prof Wright’s undergraduate Shakespeare class as contestants.

No official events will be pursued on Sunday the 15^th, but the SARC will be available for meetings by authorship societies, groups, organizations, clubs and associations on Sunday the 15th. If you’d like to reserve space for your group (at no cost, of course), contact me at dwright@cu-portland.edu or James Gaynor, the SARC intern, at jgaynor@mail2.cu-portland.edu.

Don’t miss this occasion for great fun, learning, camaraderie and bonhomie! Register now! I look forward to seeing you here in Portland, the resplendent City of Roses, in April!

I am planning to be there (and maybe even take in a play or two [or more] at the not-so-near Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland).