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Hello everyone,

The current debate on this list proves our ongoing concern with teaching
and representing the drama accurately.

Last week, as I was revising the contents list for a new medieval and early
modern drama anthology, I drafted a proposal for a new collection of essays
and studies on how we should be reading, teaching, researching, and writing
about Tudor plays before Shakespeare.

I envision the book as a collection not just of academic essays on specific
texts or periods, but also of pedagogical ideas, methodological pointers,
applications of theory, and short papers or notes on the use of documents.
The resulting text would thus be useful to teachers, researchers,
independent scholars, and theater historians as a handbook with an
authoritative, scholarly base.

In addition to a substantial crop of new studies, I think it would be
useful for the book to include a number of ideas from list-contributors'
groundbreaking published work (reiterated, summarized, or added to by the
original authors or others). This would add weight to the book as a
reference for work done in the field to complement its main thrust as a
guide for the future.

I feel some trepidation as I put myself among a group of more experienced
and knowledgeable scholars to claim editorship over such a work. On the
other hand, I have experienced nothing but encouragement from scholars in
early English drama, and the finished work will clearly be the product of
such figures of authority, the editorial contribution being as non-invasive
as possible. Having said that, I also want to encourage contributions from
new scholars in the field, since they will be responsible for continuing
this work into the future.

I will post the Call For Papers on this list and elsewhere at the weekend.
I welcome all suggestions and advice at any point in the project--such
messages may be sent to me personally, or they could go to the list if
critical opinion on a point would be helpful.


Lloyd Edward Kermode
Assistant Professor
California State University
1250 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90840
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