News

Associate Technical Editor Dr. Scott Kleinman To Visit NVS

April 6, 2026

In collaboration with the NVS, the Texas A&M University Libraries are hosting our Associate Technical Editor Dr. Scott Kleinman (Director of the CSUN Digital Humanities Center) for a campus visit on 9 April. He will be giving a lecture titled 'Modelling Premodern and Early Modern Languages and Literatures', which will also be streamed on Zoom, from 2-3pm CT in LAAH 453. Registration for streaming the lecture is required, here: https://tamu.zoom.us/meeting/register/7KvsAe87QpCRtYre22Dbew#/registration

Dr. Kleinman's talk will address the special problems that medieval and early modern texts pose for the digital humanities: variant spellings, unstable textual witnesses, and data that is difficult to standardize at scale. His talk will explore the prospects of overcoming these challenges both in teaching and research settings through the lens of the 'Lexos' text analysis tool. The methods and lessons of his talk will extend beyond historical materials to literature in underserved languages today and will raise broader questions about what digital humanities tools should look like in an era of chatbots and AI-assisted workflows. We hope to see you on 9 April.

NVS Director Runner-Up for SAA Award

April 4, 2026

Congratulations to our Director Dr. Robert Stagg whose article 'Shakespeare's Arabic Sonnets' (published in 'Shakespeare Survey' in 2024) has been named runner-up for the Shakespeare Association of America's Innovative Article Award. The article can be read here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/shakespeare-survey-77/shakespeares-arabic-sonnets/E9F63019738AC8DC01099B356530EFA0

Dr. Stagg's scholarship has been shortlisted for several previous awards including the University English Book Prize, the Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize, and the London Renaissance Seminar Contribution Award, as well as winning the University of Oxford's longstanding Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize. He joined Texas A&M University as Director of the New Variorum Shakespeare in 2024.

NVS to lead 'Variorum Shakespeare' seminar at SAA conference

March 31, 2026

The New Variorum Shakespeare led a seminar titled 'Variorum Shakespeare' at this year's Shakespeare Association of America conference in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday 2 April. Chaired by Dr. Dorothy Todd (NVS Digital Editor) and Dr. Robert Stagg (NVS Director), the seminar featured circulated papers by and discussion among Dr. Joshua Held (Southeastern Oklahoma State University), Dr. Erik McCarthy (Gordon State College), Dr. Alicia Meyer (Curator of Research Services at UPenn Libraries), and two further members of the NVS, our Associate General Editor Dr. Heidi Craig and our Richard III volume editor Dr. Mark Farnsworth. Responses to the papers were provided by two of our General Editors, Prof. Eric Rasmussen and Prof. Paul Werstine. Conversation ranged widely, with topics including: teaching with the NVS, eighteenth-century Shakespeare editing, the scholarly contributions of Kate Furness, and textual variants in plays such as Hamlet and Love's Labour's Lost. We were particularly pleased to see a large number of conference attendees come to the seminar as "auditors".

Prof. Sonia Massai appointed General Editor of the NVS

March 18, 2026

We are delighted to announce that Prof. Sonia Massai has been appointed as a General Editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare, joining our general-editorial team of Eric Rasmussen, Paul Werstine and (more recently) Heidi Craig. Prof. Massai is Professore Ordinario in Shakespeare Studies at Sapienza University of Rome and Visiting Professor of Shakespeare Studies at King's College London. She also serves as General Editor of the New Cambridge Shakespeare. Other current/recent projects include an Arden edition of Richard III (forthcoming this year) and the co-curatorship of an exhibition about 'Shakespeare and War' at the National Army Museum in London, UK. Prof. Massai has published widely. She has written two major monographs, Shakespeare's Accents (CUP 2020) and Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor (CUP 2007), and edited a plethora of essay collections such as The First Folio at 400 (IASEMS 2023) and Shakespeare and Textual Studies (CUP 2015). Previous critical editions include The Paratexts in English Printed Drama to 1642 (CUP 2014) and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Arden Early Modern Drama, 2011). We are honored to appoint such a distinguished figure in Shakespeare studies to the NVS and welcome Prof. Massai to the project.

Dr. Heidi Craig appointed Associate General Editor of the NVS

March 17, 2026

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Heidi Craig has been appointed Associate General Editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare. Dr. Craig is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto. She is editor of two major digital projects, the World Shakespeare Bibliography and Early Modern Dramatic Paratexts. She is the author of Theatre Closure and the Paradoxical Rise of English Renaissance Drama in the Civil Wars (CUP 2023), co-author of Collaboration, Technologies, and the History of Shakespearean Bibliography (CUP Elements 2026), and has written articles and chapters on dramatic culture during the interregnum, on the cultural signficance of rag paper and rag pickers, and on pedagogy in the digital age. Dr. Craig has previously served on the Board of the New Variorum Shakespeare and as an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M -- so we hope that her appointment will feel like a double homecoming. Many congratulations to Dr. Craig on this new role.

The Marvin Hunt Exhibition of the History of the NVS, opening 2 March

Feb. 1, 2026

Thanks to a generous donation by Prof. Marvin Hunt, the NVS is delighted to announce the opening of The Marvin Hunt Exhibition of the History of the NVS at the Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University on March 2nd at 4 pm. 
 
The exhibition, which celebrates the craft of NVS variorum editing before the advent of digital tools, will run from March 2nd through April 23rd. Drawing on archival materials such as collation sheets, handwritten commentary notes, edited manuscript pages, budget proposals, calls for volume editors published in Shakespeare journals, and various analogue editorial ephemera, the display reveals the collaborative, labor-intensive process through which variorum editions were assembled. By foregrounding these working documents, the exhibition highlights the intellectual craftsmanship, institutional coordination, and material history that shaped variorum scholarship in the pre-digital era.

A reception with food and drinks will follow the launch at LAAH 453 from 5 to 7 pm on March 2nd.
 
The reception event will also include the launch of Going Viral with Shakespeare and Other Essays by Professor Eric Rasmussen, NVS General Editor.

NVS conference: 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'The Winter's Tale', 10-11 Feb 2026

Jan. 29, 2026

On 10-11 February the New Variorum Shakespeare hosted a conference about A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale, the two texts we have recently published in variorum format on our website. The conference was held at the Glasscock Center, Texas A&M University. We heard from distinguished scholars across Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, and had important discussions about both plays and about the future of the variorum. The schedule was as follows:

TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY
10:00 Welcome and introduction (Troy Bickham, Robert Stagg)
10:15 New Variorum Shakespeare: 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'The Winter's Tale'
Chair: Laura Mandell
Discussants: Roberta Barker, Kris May, David Nicol, Lena Orlin, Eric Rasmussen, Bryan Tarpley, Dorothy Todd, Katayoun Torabi, Paul Werstine
11:30 Text, Editing, History, Theater History
Chair: Katie Adkison
Discussants: Peter Holland, Eric Rasmussen, Tiffany Stern, Paul Werstine
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Gender, Sexuality, Desire
Chair: Robert Stagg
Discussants: Mario DiGangi, Eric Rasmussen, Melissa Sanchez, Valerie Traub
15:30 Genre, Style, Art, Artifice
Chair: Melissa Sanchez
Discussants: Katie Adkison, Mario DiGangi, Curry Kennedy, Whitney Sperrazza, Robert Stagg
17:00 Conclusion of discussions
WEDNESDAY 11 FEBRUARY
10:00 Earliness, Lateness, Time [zoom only]
Chair: Jessica Chiba
Discussants: Urvashi Chakravarty, Rory Loughnane, Gordon McMullan, Goran Stanivukovic
11:30 Power, Hierarchy, Hospitality, Environment
Chair: Margaret Ezell
Discussants: Katherine Steele Brokaw, Ruben Espinosa, Sujata Iyengar, Peter Kirwan, Lena Orlin, Valerie Traub
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Performance
Chair: Alexandra LaGrand
Discussants: Katherine Steele Brokaw, Peter Holland, Sujata Iyengar, Peter Kirwan
15:30 Miscellaneous discussion session
Chairs: Ruben Espinosa, Tiffany Stern, Nancy Warren
17:00 Conclusion of discussions; closing remarks (Robert Stagg, Paul Werstine)
 
We extend our thanks to the following institutions at Texas A&M for helping to fund the conference: the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research (who have provided primary sponsorship and generous administrative support), the English Department, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the John and Sara Lindsey Chair (and more particularly its current occupant Prof. Margaret Ezell).