by Bryan H. Wildenthal
Richard M. Waugaman, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University, was honored today as Oxfordian of the Year for 2021.
Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, 2019 Oxfordian of the Year and chair of this year’s selection committee, introduced James A. Warren, the 2020 honoree. Warren in turn announced Professor Waugaman’s selection at the conclusion of the 2021 SOF Annual Conference. A complete list of all honorees since 2005 is available here.
As Warren emphasized: “Rick, as he is known to his many Oxfordian friends, has achieved much in both of the Fellowship’s priority areas: his research has significantly strengthened the Oxfordian claim to authorship of the ‘Shakespeare’ works and his outreach and promotion of the Oxfordian idea has been extensive and effective.”
Eagan-Donovan adds: “I’m very proud of our process and our decision. Rick is a true friend and mentor to many in the Shakespeare community. He is outspoken and innovative in his approach but always modest and gracious. He has been instrumental in connecting people, bringing together scholars and Shakespeare enthusiasts.”
Bob Meyers, recently elected President of the SOF, hails Dr. Waugaman as “a learned researcher into academic issues concerning Oxford’s authorship, a lay advocate to the general public, and a defender of the rights of skeptics everywhere to pursue the truth, wherever it may lead.”
In addition to his clinical faculty position at Georgetown, Professor Waugaman is Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. Among his more than 200 publications (many on psychiatry), are around 100 (and counting) on Shakespeare and the authorship question, including its psychoanalytical aspects. Many of the latter were accepted and published in mainstream peer-reviewed academic journals.
Dr. Waugaman has also published two e-books: It’s Time to Re-Vere the Works of ‘Shake-Speare’: A Psychoanalyst Reads the Works of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (2014), and Newly Discovered Works by ‘William Shake-Speare’: a.k.a. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (2014, 2d ed. 2017).
The great pioneering psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud was one of the most distinguished Oxfordians to date. Dr. Waugaman has written his own aptly titled essay: “How I Became an Oxfreudian.” The connections between Freud and J. Thomas Looney, who proposed the Oxfordian hypothesis in 1920, are discussed, for example, in Warren Hope’s review essay here and in James A. Warren’s Shakespeare Revolutionized (pp. 228–29, 490, 563, 642).
As Warren noted in announcing today’s recognition of Dr. Waugaman: “Not since the days of Bronson Feldman more than half a century ago has anyone promoted awareness of Edward de Vere as Shakespeare so extensively in the field of psychology.”
Most of Dr. Waugaman’s Shakespearean publications are available on his Georgetown faculty webpage. He has also provided much interesting material on his personal website, “The Oxfreudian.” He has explored, for example, Oxford’s work as a translator, as in this 2018 article in The Oxfordian and an article in the recent 2021 volume of that journal. He also published an article in the 2020 volume. He has given many well-received lectures, including in Chicago (2017), “An Oxfreudian in Academia,” and in Hartford (2019) on the “Meanings of Pen Names.”
Rick and his wife, Dr. Elisabeth P. Waugaman, are both beloved longtime members of the Oxfordian community. Elisabeth holds a Ph.D. in French literature and is also an Oxfordian scholar (see, e.g., her 2017 conference lecture and 2019 article). They each delivered presentations during the Fall Symposium that concluded today.
