Call for Papers

King’s University College and Western University invite paper proposals for the conference ‘Shakespeare After Werstine: Editing Shakespeare Now’. The conference, to be held May 1-3, 2025, in London, Ontario, will address the most urgent questions of editorial practice facing Shakespeare scholars today. Confirmed speakers include Brandi K. Adams, Alan Galey, Janelle Jenstad, Zachary Lesser, Sonia Massai, Eric Rasmussen, and Misha Teramura.

Over the past three decades, through the work of Paul Werstine and other textual scholars, assumptions and practices that dominated twentieth-century editing have been overturned. Editors and textual theorists now work at a moment of uncertainty that demands new theories and practices for establishing and presenting Shakespeare's text. Paper sessions will collectively address three key current challenges. First, how may textual and documentary evidence bear on editorial decision-making? Second, how may new editions best serve a diverse modern readership? Papers may explore, for example, how obligations to equity and diversity may be better met through editorial strategies such as paratextual materials, decisions about the playtext, and innovative forms of annotation. Third, papers will also examine how accessibility and the possibilities for interactivity that come with digital publication have transformed the editor's work, the face of the edition, and concepts of what constitutes a work and a canon.

We would be pleased to receive proposals (200-250 words) for 30-minute papers that address the future of editorial practice and textual studies. Three places will be held for graduate students in the advanced stages of doctoral research, and their participation will be supported through travel bursaries, each valued at up to $1000 (CDN). Please send proposals and inquiries to afterwerstine@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is December 21, 2024.