The publication is a new peer reviewed inter-disciplinary journal of authorship studies. "To some, the Shakespeare Authorship Question is no more than a marvelous whodunit," said Roger Stritmatter, Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature at Coppin State University and General Editor of Brief Chronicles. "For scholars, however, it represents the foremost challenge and opportunity in a modern humanities curriculum. It tests the Academy's capacity for self-correction on a global scale in response to evidence produced primarily by independent scholars."
The April mailing to MLA members coincides with publication of Contested Will, the new book by Professor James Shapiro of Columbia University, which examines the Shakespeare authorship issue in depth. A review of that book by Warren Hope, PhD, a Board member of Brief Chronicles, appears at The Shakespeare Fellowship.
"Professor Shapiro's book is evidence of the increasing relevance of the authorship issue to scholars," stated Stritmatter. "We believe our journal will become the focal point of research on the authorship debate because it resolves two outstanding issues in Academia's approach to Shakespeare.
"One is its inter-disciplinary design," said Stritmatter. "Brief Chronicles has an Editorial Board comprised of scholars with terminal degrees in Economics, English, Law, Medicine, Comparative Literature, and Theater from universities in the US, Canada and Great Britain. This is in contrast to traditional scholarship, in which journals seek to generate new discoveries within the boundaries of particular disciplines. The problem is an inter-disciplinary one, and only an inter-disciplinary approach is capable of solving it," he emphasized. "The active collaboration of linguists, historians, theatrer professionals, and legal scholars, as well as those trained in literary studies, is not only welcome but necessary." |
