Excitement is building around the Zoom Symposium scheduled for Friday and Saturday, October 8 and 9: the public highlight of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship’s 2021 Annual Conference. Please read all about it and register here if you haven’t already. It’s free!
The Symposium, hosted online from three locations in the United States and Canada, will feature the winners of the 2021 “Who Wrote Shakespeare?” Video Contest, the recipient of the second Tom Regnier Veritas Award, and the 2021 Oxfordian of the Year — along with four past Oxfordians of the Year.
The speakers include many dynamic and distinguished scholars, with thought-provoking videos and a major panel discussion. For 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.
Bob Meyers will open as host of an “Authorship 101” session with videos by the late Tom Regnier and actor Keir Cutler. John M. Shahan (2012 Oxfordian of the Year) will speak about the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition and the “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt.”
Cheryl Eagan-Donovan (2019 Oxfordian of the Year) will host a lineup featuring Ben August on Oxford’s 1565 volume by Herodotus on the Greek and Persian wars, Dr. Earl Showerman on Titus Andronicus (including its connections to Herodotus), and Katherine Chiljan on a newly discovered portrait of Oxford’s sister. Professor Roger Stritmatter (2013 Oxfordian of the Year) will discuss Cleopatra and the authorship question, and Dr. Elisabeth P. Waugaman will speak on French academics and Shakespeare. James A. Warren (2020 Oxfordian of the Year) will explore whether 1623 marked the greatest deception in literary history.
Professor Don Rubin will conclude by hosting Professor Michael Delahoyde’s exploration of Twelfth Night from an Oxfordian perspective, Professor Richard M. Waugaman on Oxford as translator of Boccaccio’s Decameron, and university librarian Michael Dudley on Stratfordian epistemology and the ethics of belief.
During that final session, Bob Meyers will moderate a panel of authors Michael Blanding, Dennis McCarthy, and Professor Bryan H. Wildenthal on McCarthy’s claim — discussed in Blanding’s book North by Shakespeare — that the translator Sir Thomas North wrote plays on which Shakespearean works were based. The panelists will debate the evidence relating to the North theory and the theory that Edward de Vere (17th Earl of Oxford) was the true “Shakespeare.”
The Fall Fundraising Appeal, with thank-you gifts at various levels, will remain open throughout the conference and until October 15. The appeal features a special SOF membership offer for any current non-members.
[published Oct. 1, 2021; earlier related announcements July 10, Aug. 19, Aug. 31, Sept. 17, Sept. 30, and Oct. 1, 2021; updated Oct. 6, 2021]
