shaksper: the global electronic shakespeare conference
by Hardy M. Cook
SHAKSPER is the international electronic conference for Shakespearean researchers, instructors, students, and those who share their academic interests and concerns. It currently includes approximately 1,400 SHAKSPEReans, from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States.
Like the national and international Shakespeare Association conferences, SHAKSPER offers announcements and bulletins, scholarly papers, and the formal exchange of ideas-but SHAKSPER also offers on-going opportunities for spontaneous informal discussion, eavesdropping, peer review, and a sense of worldwide scholarly community. In addition, the SHAKSPER Fileserver offers conference papers and abstracts, an International Directory of Shakespeare Institutes, biographies of conference members, and a variety of announcements, texts, and bibliographies.
The daily SHAKSPER digests are organized by subject for the reader's convenience. SHAKSPER digests include conference announcements, member notes and queries, book and theatre reviews, textual debate, discussion of lecture strategies, and much more. The Editor normally publishes contributions to SHAKSPER lightly edited and grouped according to topic for readers' convenience. Contributions that are clearly irresponsible, offensive, or apart from SHAKSPER's purpose will be returned unpublished as will submissions concerning the so-called "Authorship Question."
Technically, SHAKSPER is a LISTSERV "list" running under UNIX on an Sun work station (a Sparc 4, running Solaris 2.5) at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland. The list editor, Hardy M. Cook, is a Professor of English at Bowie State University and can be contacted at <editor@ws.BowieState.edu>.
No academic qualifications are required for membership in SHAKSPER, and anyone interested in English Literature, the Renaissance, or Drama is welcome to join us. Write to the editor or send a one-line e-mail message, reading "SUB SHAKSPER firstname lastname" to <LISTSERV@ws.BowieState.edu>, and you will receive detailed information with further instructions for becoming a SHAKSPERean.
[SHAKSPER is edited/moderated and is not open to automatic subscription.]