by Wally Hurst
As over 8,000 English teachers from around the United States convened in Baltimore, Maryland, for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) on November 22–24, 2019, the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (SOF) was there!
The NCTE convention, one of the largest of its kind, featured hundreds of speakers and a dizzying range of topics.
Dr. Roger Stritmatter, Professor of Humanities at Coppin State University in Baltimore; Shelly Maycock, an English instructor at Virginia Tech University; filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, who teaches at several universities in the Boston area; and Wally Hurst, a former theatre director and instructor at Louisburg College in North Carolina, all worked the SOF booth at the conference.
The brainchild of Shelly Maycock, this venture at the NCTE convention was the SOF’s first attempt at a gathering of this size and scope. The four Oxfordians hit the ground running, though, and reached many hundreds of friendly English teachers, most of whom taught Shakespeare in their classrooms back home. The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt was a great eye-catcher, along with playing Cheryl Eagan-Donovan’s film, Nothing Is Truer Than Truth, playing and the great display materials.
It seemed as though we stayed busy for three straight days, talking to folks and enjoying the conversations with them. After the initial greetings, these curious attendees often expressed specific interest in the Shakespeare authorship question (SAQ), and were given a packet of materials to get them started if they wanted to include the SAQ in their curriculum along with the plays they were teaching. Many expressed particular interest in getting their students engaged with the study of Shakespeare by including this topic, thereby making the subject more exciting. Others had heard about the authorship controversy and were interested in learning more, but had no idea how to incorporate it into their teaching.
What an astounding response we got! We had over a hundred sign-ups for our mailing list to receive the materials by email as a Google document. Moreover, well over a hundred teachers stayed and talked to us for a significant amount of time about the issue, the evidence, and the basics of teaching the controversy to students.
These were pleasant conversations: upbeat, friendly, and well-received by those who took the time to get to know us.
We expect a significant uptick in visits to our website, and because we gave away all 300 copies of Lynne Kositsky’s wonderful book for young readers, A Question of Will, before the first day was over, we expect that orders for that book will increase as well in the next few months.
Those of us who attended on behalf of the SOF agree that this conference was the ideal place to meet these teachers, most of them middle school and high school teachers, the vast majority NOT wedded to the traditional theory/myth/cult of Shakespeare authorship. Over 95% of those we spoke to were more than willing to question the traditional attribution, much more so than their colleagues from the college ranks. They are hearing questions from their students, too, which is certainly encouraging.
Thanks to the SOF for sponsoring our attendance at the convention. We’ll need another great crew for the Denver event next year, too, and we’ll need to get a space to show Cheryl’s film to more people, and perhaps get a presentation or two, more books (!), and a banner under our SOF banner that reads “Subversive Shakespeare”!
We all believe that this conference is unequivocally our best chance to begin the wholesale recognition and teaching of the Shakespeare Authorship Controversy, and we strongly encourage any other organizations to explore this avenue and others like it around the world.
[published Dec. 20, 2019, updated June 2020]
