News

New Variorum Shakespeare events @ SAA/RSA

The New Variorum Shakespeare will host two events at the Shakespeare Association of America and Renaissance Society of America conferences in Boston in March 2025.

At the SAA we will play host to 'Breakfast with the New Variorum Shakespeare' on Thursday 20 March from 8am to 9:30am in Liberty B (second floor), Sheraton Hotel. Please join us for food and drink and a chance to hear about the NVS from our Director Dr. Robert Stagg and one of our General Editors Prof. Eric Rasmussen. Free and open to all conference attendees; no further registration required. This event has been generously sponsored by the English Department at Texas A&M University.

At the RSA we will be the subject of a roundtable on Saturday 22 March from 2:30pm to 4:30pm in the Vermont Room (fifth floor), Marriott Copley Place. Speakers on the roundtable will include Prof. Lena Orlin (Georgetown), Prof. Paul Werstine (UWO), Dr. Katayoun Torabi (TAMU), Dr. Dorothy Todd (TAMU), and Dr. Kris May (TAMU). Come along to hear more about the NVS's history, future, and editorial and digital practices, as well as for a how-to guide to using the NVS in your research and teaching.

For more information about either of these events, please contact rstagg@tamu.edu 

NVS Seminar: Prof. Liza Blake, 'Queer(er) Editing', Spring Semester 2025

The New Variorum Shakespeare was delighted to host the first of its new NVS Seminars, a regular series of talks about subjects related to the NVS by distinguished speakers. Our first NVS Seminar of the Spring Semester 2025 was given by Prof. Liza Blake (University of Toronto) under the title 'Queer(er) Editing'. We were very happy to host Prof. Blake at Texas A&M and to livestream her talk to attendees from around the world.

A Zoom recording of the talk can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hYCQcO_m-Qv82G7SLtVexuOwZzt-wNS7/view

"Meet the NVS" webinar, 30 January 2025

On Thursday 30 January 2025 the New Variorum Shakespeare staged an online "Meet the NVS" event which (re)introduced the project to attendees -- to its history, its current digital format, and its future endeavors. We also provided a how-to guide to using the digital NVS. Speakers included Prof. Lena Orlin (Georgetown), the Chair of the NVS Board; Prof. Eric Rasmussen (Nevada), General Editor of the NVS; Prof. Paul Werstine (UWO), General Editor of the NVS; Dr. Robert Stagg (TAMU), Director of the NVS; Dr. Katayoun Torabi (TAMU), Digital Editor and Project Manager of the NVS; and Dr. Dorothy Todd (TAMU) and Dr. Kris May (TAMU), Associate Digitial Editors of the NVS.

You can see a Zoom recording of "Meet the NVS" here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-zHaUQ9TKud5eUxu0CNPgpHQe0GE5FGI/view

New Variorum Shakespeare announces event schedule for Spring Semester 2025

The New Variorum Shakespeare has announced its schedule of events for the forthcoming spring semester.

Our program begins with an online "Meet the NVS" event on Thursday 30 January at 12 noon CST, which will (re)introduce the New Variorum Shakespeare, its history, its future plans, and which will also include a how-to guide to using the digital NVS. Speakers will include Prof. Lena Orlin (Georgetown), Prof. Eric Rasmussen (Nevada), Prof. Paul Werstine (UWO), Dr. Robert Stagg (TAMU), Dr. Katayoun Torabi (TAMU), Dr. Dorothy Todd (TAMU) and Dr. Kris May (TAMU). You can register here to attend this Zoom event: https://tamu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwlceqgrTkoGtC5o4edeXim2gsQwhLHK2mP

Later in the semester we will be inaugurating the New Variorum Shakespeare Seminar with talks by Prof. Liza Blake (Toronto) in February and Dr. Aaron T. Pratt (Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin) in April. Dates for the seminars will be announced shortly, and both seminars will take place on the Texas A&M campus but will be streamed live online via Zoom.

In March we will be hosting two major events at the combined Shakespeare Association of America - Renaissance Society of America conference/s in Boston. On Thursday 20 March, 8:00-9:30am, the NVS will be sponsoring a breakfast reception at the SAA. All conference attendees are welcome to attend this free reception and find out more about the NVS (while consuming a bounty of pro bono croissants); no further registration is required. On 22 March, 2:30-4:00pm, the NVS will be the subject of a roundtable discussion event at the RSA. Speakers will include Prof. Lena Orlin (Georgetown), Prof. Paul Werstine (UWO), Dr. Robert Stagg (TAMU), Dr. Katayoun Torabi (TAMU) and Dr. Dorothy Todd (TAMU).

We hope to see you at many events in our spring program.

The NVS Receives Funding for Two Undergraduate Professional and Research Experience Program (UPREP) for 2025

Each semester, the Department of English selects 5-7 faculty projects for the UPREP program, which pairs undergraduate English majors with faculty members on selected projects outside of the classroom. The Undergraduate Studies Committee voted on and approved funding for two NVS research proposals. One proposal is titled “XML Encoding and Correcting Ingestion Errors for the New Variorum Shakespeare,” and was submitted by Dr. Kris May. The other proposal is titled “Collation Tool Development and Transcription for the New Variorum Shakespeare,” and was submitted by Dr. Dorothy Todd. Grace Hoelscher and Allie Blue have been selected as NVS UPREP fellows and will begin working on the NVS project in the spring. 

Texas Digital Humanities Symposium, 5-6 September 2024

Bryan Tarpley presented a paper titled “Corpora: A Dataset Studio for the Digital Humanities” at this year’s Texas Digital Humanities Symposium at Baylor on September 6th. Corpora is a tool for creating, searching, exploring, and transforming digital humanities datasets at any scale and currently serves as the backend for several A&M digital projects, including the NVS. Bryan's paper discussed plans for further developing Corpora and how this tool might be situated in the larger DH ecosystem of technologies. For more information, please see the full  conference program.

NVS Team Update

The New Variorum Shakespeare project welcomes Andrew Hoyt (Applied Mathematics with a Computer Science emphasis, Undergraduate) and Grace Hoelescher (English, Undergraduate) back to the team, along with new team member Allie Blue (English, Undergraduate). All three students will serve as Strategic Transformative Research Program (STRP) Fellows this semester. The NVS applied for a Type-II $10,000 STRP grant for edition gathering, transcription, and collation work for the second phase of the project and were awarded full funding. Also joining the team is Kaitlin Carman as the NVS intern. She is an English major, currently working on her digital humanities certificate at Framingham State University, under the direction of Dr. Kristen Abbott Bennett, Assistant Professor of English at Framingham.