The Richard Paul and Jane Roe Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre’s(SARC) acting director Rev. Dr. David Kluth named Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship trustee Earl Showerman, MD, to serve as interim chairperson for the SARC Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference held annually at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. When Dr. Kluth announced January 19 that SARC founder and director Daniel Wright, PhD, is no longer employed by the university, the SOF board asked Dr. Showerman to extend the organization’s support for the work of the center during the leadership transition.
Dr. Showerman reported today:
I have just returned from Portland where I met on several occasions with Dean David Kluth, who is now responsible for the SARC programs. After several days of posting email queries and phone calls, there appears to be sufficient interest in organizing the annual spring Shakespeare authorship conference this year that the dean [Dr. Kluth] has decided to proceed and has asked that I serve as an interim conference chair. As such, I am asking you all to reserve April 11-13, 2014 for the conference and to promote the conference among your colleagues and contacts. While a preliminary roster of speakers is listed below, there is ample room for more papers to be presented and I will soon post a call for further papers on the Concordia SARC and other websites. There is also a possibility that the program will include events on that Thursday, April 10, including presentations to high school students as the SARC has received a grant to offer a program on the Shakespeare authorship question to high schools in the Portland area. Much work needs to be done to bring this off successfully, and I look forward to hearing from you and others in our group with ideas and paper proposals. (email: earlees@charter.net.)
In his announcement on Sunday, Dr. Kluth who is dean of Concordia University College of Theology, Arts & Sciences – said:
As some of you might already know, Dr. Dan Wright was on leave from Concordia University during the second half of Fall semester 2013. I wanted to share with you that Dr. Wright is no longer employed with Concordia University Portland. We appreciate his many years of dedicated service to the University and especially to the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre (SARC). I’m sure Dr. Wright will continue to provide valuable scholarship to the Shakespeare authorship discussion in the years ahead. We are currently in the process of reshaping the SARC and will keep you posted as events warrant. Concordia University is committed to playing an active role in the international authorship discussion. During this interim period please feel free to contact me with any questions (email: dkluth@cu-portland.edu).
Dr. Wright has not responded to our request for comment. The SOF board extends their best wishes for his continued success and well-being.
Preliminary list of speakers for the April 11-13, 2014
SARC Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference
Concordia University, Portland, Oregon
- Professor Peter Sturrock – Author of AKA Shakespeare
- William Ray – “Secrets of the Droeshout Shakespeare Portrait”
- Earl Showerman – “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Shakespeare’s Aristophanic Comedy”
- Michael Morse – “A Critique of Oxfordian Cryptographic Analysis: Falsifiability, the Non-Exclusivity Problem’, and the Seductive Allure of Fictive Ontologies” and “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song: The Case for Oxford ‘s Authorship”
- Lynne Kositsky – “Shrovetide in The Tempest”
- Professor Roger Stritmatter – “This Common Shipwreck”: Some Antecedents of Tempest metaphor in an annotated copy of Seneca’s Ten Tragedies
- Professor Michael Delahoyde
- James Warren
- Professor Sam Saunders – “Conditional Probability and the Shakespeare Authorship Question”
