Click HERE for a PDF of the Call for Papers
Announcing the 48th Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference
“Shakespeare for our Time”
Owens Community College: Toledo Campus
October 16-18, 2025
The OVSC welcomes abstracts for papers, panels, workshops, and roundtables that focus on Shakespeare’s importance in our present times.
Topics can include
- recent theatrical and film representations, other literary creations
- current critical and theoretical approaches
- new ways of teaching his works
- collaborations with other fields
Proposals can address issues such as
- all forms of “commons and the “common good,” or conversely, “enemies within”
- collaborations within literary studies and with other fields
- positive social concerns about shared space, social conditions, justice, and other aspects of the plays
- explicitly political concerns such as the plenitude of duplicitous, self-serving characters in general as well as “states of emergency,” sovereign decisions, and resistances to those judgments and decisions
We seek to emphasize applications of Early Modern literature to today’s issues:
- how do Shakespeare’s plays represent the possibilities of solving problems and overcoming contention?
- what can they tell us about our current historical moment?
- how do they connect to social and political questions we face now?
- how can we look to Shakespeare to inspire hope, parse our social challenges, or understand the traumas and dramas of our contemporary moment?
The conference invites scholars of all ranks, including theater practitioners and teachers, to take part in its scholarly community. We welcome graduate students for regular sessions and undergraduate students for roundtable seminars.
Undergraduate presenters are encouraged to submit papers for the M. Rick Smith Memorial Prize competition. Graduate student presenters are encouraged to submit papers for the Julia Reinhard Lupton Prize.
Sandra Logan has been a longstanding friend of OVSC, having hosted an Ohio Shakespeare Conference in Michigan. Her early research includes the history and theory of drama (including Shakespeare), poetry and poetics, historiography, and women writers. More recently she has considered conjunctions between contemporary and early modern political theory in relation to Shakespeare’s plays. Her books include Text /Events in Early Modern England: Poetics of History (Ashgate, 2007), and Shakespeare’s Foreign Queens: Drama, Politics, and the Enemy Within (Palgrave, 2018). She is currently developing an invited monograph for Arden’s ‘Shakespeare and Theory’ series entitled Shakespeare and Political Theology. OVSC is delighted to have Sandra back!
Mira ‘Assaf is completing her first manuscript, titled Royal Marriage, Foreign Queens, and Constructions of Race in Early Modern England. She was a 2023-2024 Folger Shakespeare Library Long-Term fellow. Her public humanities essays have appeared in several online publications, including Shakespeare Globe, The Sundial, The Millions, Overland Journal, The Rambling, The Conversation, Medium-Equity, and The Platform. ‘Assaf currently serves as Early Modern Section Editor for The Sundial. In 2023-2024, she served on the Program Committee for the Shakespeare Association of America. Her work has been supported by generous grants and fellowship from The Folger Shakespeare Library, The Shakespeare Association of America, The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), The Renaissance Society of America, The Women’s Place at The Ohio State University; The Muslim Studies Endowment (Butler), and NEH/Frederic M. Ayres Fund (Butler).
Carol Mejia-LaPerle, Wright State University, will conduct a newly conceived Writing Workshop, designed to give attendees a dedicated space and time to develop their own writing projects.
Hillary Nunn, University of Akron,will collaborate with Robert Wagner and the Owens Culinary Arts Department to create an authentic Renaissance Feast.
Jeremy Meier, Owens College Arts Department Chair, will direct The Winter’s Tale.
Send abstracts and questions to: Russell_Bodi@owens.edu
OVSC Website: http://www.ovshakes.org
Deadline for abstracts is September 5th
Early Decision deadline is June 21st