In 2001, Professor Virginia Mason Vaughan of Clark University called together her colleagues from Worcester's Consortium Colleges to discuss the possibility of organizing an undergraduate Shakespeare conference that would be open to students from all the colleges in the area. The goal was to offer undergraduate students a pre-professional experience that would showcase the important research they were doing in their Shakespeare classes. The Committee modeled the experience on annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America at which scholars deliver papers and discuss their work in sessions and informally over coffee. The Conference also offers students an opportunity to present their work outside the classroom to a real audience, an important part of life in many professions, not just in academia. The Committee picked a theme, identified a guest speaker for a plenary luncheon, and solicited proposals, and on April 12, 2002, the first Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference was held at Clark University. When the Worcester Consortium ceased to function in 2012, professors from various New England colleges and universities took on the project as a labor of love so that the conference might continue to inspire and showcase excellent work by undergraduate students of Shakespeare.
Our fourteenth annual conference is scheduled for April 18, 2015. Now that the conference announcement is posted on the web, we receive proposals from schools as far away as Kentucky, Ohio, and Ontario. The format of the program has remained the same: during the morning, students deliver their papers in sessions moderated by the faculty (or a graduate student). Normally each session features three papers, selected to be read together because of a common theme. All conference participants join together for a plenary luncheon and a talk from a distinguished scholar in Shakespeare studies. Sessions continue in the afternoon, along with special presentations of scenes from the plays by student or professionals and (on one occasion) a sword fighting demonstration by the staff of Worcester’s the Higgins Armory. The result is a lively and varied program.