The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0491 Friday, 18 September 2009
From: Hardy M. Cook <
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Date: Friday, September 18, 2009
Subject: SHAKSPER Book Review Panel
Dear SHAKSPEReans,
Since traffic has been slow lately, I am taking the opportunity to
update members on some of SHAKSPER's ongoing projects.
Today, I am using a message I sent to a publisher's representative to
talk about the recent work of the SHAKSPER Book Review Panel, a group of
distinguished scholars who select books to be reviewed and reviewers for
them, then peer review the submissions before they are published in
conjunction with the SBReview project. Subsequently, these digests are
archived on the SHAKSPER web site as handsomely formatted pdf files that
anyone who visits the site may read or download. The reviews can, of
course, be found through Google and are included in various academic
databases, including The World Shakespeare Bibliography Online
<http://www.worldshakesbib.org>, the most comprehensive record of
Shakespeare-related scholarship available.
During the summer, the Panel under the energetic direction of Professor
Peter Paolucci of the Department of English at York University in
Toronto, Canada, the current Moderator for the SHAKSPER Book Review
Panel has been working hard. The SHAKSPER Book Reviews (SBReviews)
project is a relatively new feature with our first review published in
January of this year. Although we have only distributed three reviews so
far <http://www.shaksper.net/archives/files/reviews.html>, several dozen
new reviews have been assigned to reviewers and will be appearing
throughout the next twelve months.
Peter has done an amazing job this summer organizing books the Panel has
been considering for review, soliciting suggestions from the Panel for
reviewers and tracking the Panel's vetting of these books and reviewers,
inviting reviewers and writing to publishers for review copies for the
selected reviewers, as well as keeping members of the Panel update on
progress in all areas. (Please don't ask me to review what I have just
written. INSERT smile.) Peter's remarkable efforts on the behalf of the
Panel and list members deserves the highest commendation.
Although Panel members have heard me say this dozens and dozens of
times, thank you, Peter. And to SHAKSPER subscribers, you shall be
seeing the results of our efforts by the end of this calendar year and
throughout the months to come on a quarterly basis.
Best wishes,
Hardy M. Cook, Ph.D.
Professor of English (Retired)
Owner/Editor/Moderator SHAKSPER
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www.shaksper.net
PS: When Dr. Paolucci contacts publishers and potential reviewers (who
are not necessarily members of the list but who have been selected by
the Panel as appropriate scholars to review the selected work), he
includes a descriptive blurb about SHAKSPER, which I am sharing here.
Now in its twentieth year of serving the academic community, SHAKSPER is
an edited and moderated, international, e-mail distribution list for
discussion among Shakespearean researchers, instructors, students, and
anyone sharing their academic interests and concerns. The SHAKSPER
digests are delivered, archived, and managed with L-Soft's LISTSERV (r)
software. In addition to the regular mailings to subscribers, anyone can
use the Internet to access the archives and the list's other materials
from the SHAKSPER web site <www.shaksper.net>. The list's over 1,000
members have joined from sixty-eight countries; they include prominent
Shakespearean textual scholars and bibliographers, editors and critics,
as well as university, college, and community-college professors,
high-school teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, actors,
theatre professionals, authors, poets, playwrights, librarians, computer
scientists, lawyers, doctors, retirees, and other interested
participants. SHAKSPER endeavors to emphasize the scholarly by providing
the opportunity for the formal exchange of ideas through queries and
responses regarding literary, critical, textual, theoretical, and
performative topics and issues. Announcements of conferences, calls for
papers, seminars, lectures, symposia, job openings, the publication of
books, the availability of online and print articles, Internet databases
and resources, journal contents, and performances and festivals are
regular features as are assessments of scholarly books, past and present
theatrical productions, and Shakespeare and Shakespeare-inspired films
as well as citations and discussions of "popular" culture references to
Shakespeare and his works. SHAKSPER also provides occasion for
spontaneous informal discussion, eavesdropping, peer review, and a sense
of belonging to a worldwide scholarly community. In recent years,
several special features have been added to SHAKSPER, including Cook's
Tour of Internet Resources for Students and Scholars of the Early Modern
Period; Roundtable discussions, concentrating on significant topics
derived from issues of current interest in the discipline; and the
SHAKSPER Book Reviews (SBReviews), reviews overseen by a Moderator and
Panel that selects the books for review and the peers to review them,
and then vets these reviews prior to their distribution as regular
digests. These digests are then archived on the SHAKSPER web site. In
addition to the archive of past discussions, the SHAKSPER web site
includes "A Selected Guide to Shakespeare on the Internet," an
international directory of Shakespearean institutions, organizations,
libraries, and journals; a bibliography of poems, novels, plays, and
films inspired by Shakespeare and his works, and much more.
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
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The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.
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