In an essay in the Academic Commons, Tatjana Chorney argues that there are many similarities between the way hypertext structures our reading practices, and the way in which early modern readers interacted with the things they read. Unlike a printed text that can only be passively read, hypertext shapes an active and appropriative reader who [...]

I am sure that Peacay must have mentioned this site at BibliOdyssey, but I only just discovered this online exhibition at the U.S. National Library of Medicine: Dream Anatomy. The site contains an introduction to anatomical science and art, with information on printing techniques, the cultural-historical context of the works, as well pieces on individual [...]

“Violently Shakespeare” is the title of this year’s Ohio Shakespeare Conference. More information here from mid April.
This year’s Annual Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group Symposium, organised by Brett D. Hirsh, is called “World as Stage / Stage as World,” and seeks to investigate the relationship between the world and the theatre — and how one [...]

It’s been so quiet here this week that the Blogosphere Ecosystem has taken Kafkaesque measures and has metamorphosed me into a “lowly insect,” I notice. Time for a book review!

I have been reading Disease, Diagnosis and Cure on the Early Modern Stage, edited by Stephanie Moss and Kaara L. Peterson (Ashgate 2004). The central premise [...]

The first online symposium on the Old Bailey Session Papers is up at the Head Beeb. Tim Lovell-Smith, Chris A. Williams, Jonathan Edelstein, Penny Richard, Russ Fagalie, Nathalie Bennett, and Sharon Howard all used the newly-available online database of the Old Bailey to research subjects such as an unexpected nineteenth-century Polynesian community in London, [...]

The very first volume of the online journal The Literary Magazine contains an intriguing piece on Milton, terrorism and revenge.
Like the call for papers for the Shakespeare Yearbook on “Shakespeare after 9/11,” Neil Forsyth’s article looks at early modern literature from the perspective of our current political context. It is an intelligent and broad-ranging [...]

After yesterday’s Syrian appropriation of Shakespeare, here is news that The Shakespeare Yearbook is going to devote an issue to “Shakespeare after 9/11″, and will sponsor a special session on the subject at this year’s MLA meeting.

In the wake of the New Historicism, much critical work on Shakespeare and his contemporaries has been faulted [...]