Call for submissions: World Shakespeare Congress 2026
The International Shakespeare Association (ISA) has announced that submissions are open for the twelfth World Shakespeare Congress (WSC), to be held in Verona, Italy, from 20-26 July 2026. Proposals for seminars, workshops and panels should respond to the theme of “Planetary Shakespeares”. The Congress website promises that the event will “foster discussion of the many ways in which Shakespeare may be conceived as ‘planetary’, reaching out to resonances with new cultural galaxies of enquiry, debate, and knowledge.”
The call for submissions invites prospective participants to “bridge the Gutenberg print age with the flourishing of humanism and the era of the virtual and the post-human, raising questions about our own understandings of the humanities at a time of manifold crises. In addition, the Congress will provide the occasion for connecting Shakespearean studies and practices to new forms of social awareness and engagement, as well as of innovative takes on our sense of the real. It will offer several areas of debate, emphasising the relation between eco-concerns and the position of the human and post-humanity, in relation to the rise of technology, the digital and the virtual.”
These areas are:
• General
The Congress welcomes proposals taking up any of the themes and approaches of interest to Shakespeareans today, rethinking aesthetic, social, cultural and political categories beyond current Shakespearean views.
• Eco-Shakespeare
An already ‘globalised’ phenomenon, showing its adaptability and resilience, ‘Shakespeare’ is an ideal vehicle of exploration and dialogue, community and care – a way of bringing diverse people together to face the eco-crisis, whether in the theatre, in the open, or in the classroom.
• Reconfiguring ‘Global’ Shakespeare
The 2026 Congress is an opportunity to put fresh critical pressure on the uses, both pro and con, of all the vocabularies of ‘universality’ in light of a plurality of coexisting ‘Shakespeare universes’ where canons and fanons (fan canons) are not mutually exclusive.
• Shakespeare Galaxies
The myriad forms of past and contemporary Shakespeare remediations – from print, to the moving body, to the hybrid and virtual spaces of cyberart and cyborg theatre, etc. – encourage reflection on the evolving constellations of ‘Shakespeare Galaxies’.
Proposers are encouraged to interpret the Congress theme widely, and to consider texts, performances, and appropriations of Shakespeare’s work in a full range of media.
Proposals for workshops and seminars given at the Congress will normally be offered by at least two delegate co-leaders. In recognition of the international character of the conference, the committee strongly encourages proposals led by or involving participants from diverse national or regional backgrounds, languages, or cultural traditions.
Those submitting proposals should ensure that their membership of the ISA is current. See https://internationalshakespeare.org.uk or contact the ISA office.
All proposals will be reviewed by members of the ISA Programme Committee:
Bi-qi Beatrice Lei, Shakespeare Association of America (Chair)
Tom Bishop, University of Auckland
Chris Thurman, University of the Witwatersrand
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
Proposals are to be submitted online by 15 September 2024.