Behind the Scenes with SHAKSPER: The Global Electronic Shakespeare Conference

SHAKSPER, founded as an “academic” conference and now in its nineteenth year, is an international “electronic seminar” that enables ongoing discussion of all things Shakespearean. Three extended discussions exemplify SHAKSPER at its best. In the spirit of reasserting SHAKSPER discursive role in the scholarly community, I initiated a new feature on SHAKSPER in January 2007, The SHAKSPER Roundtable. Another Roundtable is planned for spring 2008 and a peer-reviewed Book Review Feature will begin around that time. My hope is that these two changes, my being a more active moderator, as well as the possibility of further new features, will enable SHAKSPER to regain some of the excitement of its earlier years when scholars around the world had an alternative venue to conferences and publications to talk and to explore ideas of interest to Shakespeare studies.