Despite all our hopes to meet again in person this year, the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Board of Trustees has concluded it is necessary to make this year’s Annual Conference an online event. It will be held on Zoom and will take place in two parts: the Annual Meeting on Saturday, October 2 (for SOF members only), and a public Symposium with papers and a panel on October 8 and 9.
Both parts of the Fall Conference will be free of charge, with registration details announced in coming weeks. Attendance at the Symposium on October 8–9 is open to anyone, not just SOF members.
At the same time, the Board confirmed it is determined to hold next year’s Annual Conference in person (including a live online feed for those unable to attend), on September 22–25, 2022, in Ashland, Oregon. (The SOF noted last February, in announcing the Spring 2021 International Online Symposium, that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s plans “did not include any live-stage Shakespeare productions during 2021, forcing the SOF to again postpone our in-person Ashland conference.”)
(Updates: Please note one schedule change. Session Three on Saturday, October 9, will begin one hour earlier than previously announced, at 4:00 pm Eastern, concluding at 7:15 pm. For full schedule details and to register, please click here. We have also published a full-color syllabus with the schedule and all speaker biographies, abstracts, and photographs.)
This year’s online Symposium will begin Friday evening, October 8 (7:00–9:00 pm Eastern). In response to requests from many of our new members, the first session will be an Authorship 101 discussion hosted by Bob Meyers from Washington, D.C. Talks will introduce the arguments for seeing the name “Shake-speare” (as it was often spelled) as a pseudonym. Speakers (to be announced) will provide an overview of the subject along with reasons why the true author was Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Newcomers to the SOF as well as veterans will participate.
The Symposium will continue on Saturday, October 9, with two more sessions — Session 2 (12:00–3:00 pm Eastern) hosted by Cheryl Eagan-Donovan from Boston, and Session 3 (4:00–7:20 pm Eastern) hosted by Professor (and Conference Committee chair) Don Rubin from Toronto. These sessions will include presentations by numerous established SOF researchers, along with a panel featuring Michael Blanding discussing his book North by Shakespeare.
The Saturday sessions will also include showings of finalists in the 2021 Video Contest and will announce the Video Contest winners and the 2021 Oxfordian of the Year. Speakers will be announced in the coming weeks by the Conference Committee’s programming co-chairs, Bonner Miller Cutting and Cheryl Eagan-Donovan. The SOF will also hold its Fall 2021 Fundraising and New Membership Appeal in conjunction with the Fall Conference (stay tuned for details to be announced in October).
The SOF Annual Meeting on October 2 is for members only, who will be able to attend via special Zoom link. The Annual Meeting will include a report from outgoing SOF President John Hamill, committee reports, financial statements, plans for the coming year, and the election of a new President and Trustees.
[published July 10, 2021; updated Oct. 6, 2021]
