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Images from Toronto day four

Oxfordian of the year!

Roger Stritmatter, PhD was named Oxfordian of the Year at the 2013 Shakespeare Oxford Society/Shakespeare Fellowship joint conference held at the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto, Ontario, October 17-20.

SOS President John Hamill and SF President Tom Regnier, JD announce the results of the unification vote. Members of the Shakespeare Oxford Society (138 to two) and the Shakespeare Fellowship (74 to four) voted in favor of unification. Hamill will assume presidency of the unified organization, the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, when legal papers are filed today. Update 10/22/13: Ann Zakelj posted a video of the presidents signing the new bylaws at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQK7J2d9r8&sns=em.


Shakespeare Authorship Coalition Director John Shahan spoke to attendees at the conference banquet about what they can do to forward the cause of anti-Stratfordian research: 1. read and sign the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt, 2. share authorship ideas on social media and elsewhere, 3. support research with donations of time and money.

Alex McNeil holds unification votes at SF annual meeting October 20, 2013: 74 yes, four no. McNeil will edit the newsletter for the new Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship.

Researcher Earl Showerman, MD presented on the topic of "A Midsummer Night's Dream: Shakespeare's Aristophanic Comedy" on the final day of the conference, October 20.

Sky Gilbert, PhD -- Guelph University associate professor and conference presenter of "Was Shakespeare a Euphuist?"-- was quoted in the Guelph-Mercury in response to university colleagues who publicly criticized university involvement in the Shakespeare authorship conference. The article, titled "Guelph professors troubled over Shakespeare debate" by Chris Seto was published Oct. 19, 2013.

Local conference organizer Don Rubin, who teaches a course on the Shakespeare authorship at York University also came under fire in print. Theater critic Kelly Nestruck authored a piece that appeared Oct. 16, 2013 in the Toronto Globe & Mail titled "Amid controversy, two Canadian universities financilly back debate over Shakespeare's 'true identity'". Both articles generated extensive commentary by readers. Rubin invited Nestruck to debate the issue in today's (Oct. 21, 2013) Letters to the Editor in the Globe & Mail.

Unified organization gets glamorous new website



Jennifer Newton, creator of The Shakespeare Underground podcast site worked with members of the Shakespeare Fellowship communications committee to redesign the Fellowship website which will incorporate the site of the former Shakespeare Oxford Society now that both organizations have unified. Material from both old SF and SOS sites will be archived and available on the new site. For a preview of the space that will be the official home of the new Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship on the Web, go to http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/

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