January 6, 2010, Hudson, MA...
The editors of Brief Chronicles are pleased to announce that
six new members have joined its Editorial Board
from England and the United States in the past month. Moreover, the contents of the journal have been selected for indexing by the Modern Language Association International Bibliography/ and the World
Shakespeare Bibliography.
The peer review journal was launched as a free online publication in November 2009 at http://www.briefchronicles.com/, and is published annually as an inter-disciplinary journal focusing on Shakespeare and authorship studies. The original Board comprised six academics with terminal degrees from universities in the US and Canada, including scholars in theater, English, law and medicine.
"The goal of Brief Chronicles was to form an Editorial Board with inter-disciplinary capabilities that could examine both Shakespeare and Renaissance authorship issues with the scope and depth not previously
available to humanities journals," stated its General Editor, Roger Stritmatter. "We have achieved this with the addition of these six new members, which now gives the journal expertise in half a dozen academic
disciplines from universities in the US, Canada, and England."
At the same time, "selection for indexing by two international bibliographies in the humanities demonstrates the superb quality of scholarship already to be found in Brief Chronicles," stated Gary Goldstein, the journal Managing Editor. "Since this selection comes immediately upon publication of our inaugural issue," he added, "it is clear we have met the high standard expected of the scholarly community on an international level."
The MLA International Bibliography is the most widely distributed humanities database, being the pre-eminent reference work in the fields of literature, language, linguistics, folklore, ethno-musicology, and
teaching. It is compiled by the staff of the MLA Office of Bibliographic Information Services with the cooperation of more than 100 contributing bibliographers in the United States and abroad. The /MLA International Bibliography/ annually indexes over 66,000 books and articles, lists over 1.5 million citations, and is available worldwide in print, on CD-ROM and online at www.mla.org/bibliography.
The World Shakespeare Bibliography is sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., edited by Professor James Harner at Texas A&M University, and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The online version is located at www.worldshakesbib.org.
The World Shakespeare Bibliography provides annotated entries for all important books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare published or produced between 1960 and 2010. The scope is international, extending to more than 120 languages. The more than 123,496 records in the 2009 edition cite several hundred thousand additional reviews of books, productions, films, and audio recordings.
The six new members of the journal's Editorial Board add English, Theater, World History and Economics scholars from universities in the US and England.
They include a Research Professor in Economics from the University of Hertfordshire; a specialist in historical codicology and textual dating from Harvard University; a former editor of the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals / with an established expertise in 19th century anonymous publication; a Professor of Shakespearean studies from Blackburn College; and a widely published Professor of theater history from the University of Missouri. The sixth new member of the board is a pioneer in the use of biometric linguistics to establish authorship of disputed documents, a legal consultant in forensic linguistics, and a recognized expert on the Daubert Standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard.
Geoffrey M. Hodgson, PhD, is Research Professor in Economics at the University of Hertfordshire in England. He is an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK and the author of more than 12 books and 100 articles in academic journals.
Donald Ostrowski, PhD, is a Research Advisor in the Social Sciences and a Lecturer at Harvard University's Extension School, where he teaches World History and survey courses, including the plays of Shakespeare. He
has an extensive publication record in comparative history and methodology, with expertise in codicology, text dating and attribution.
Mike Hyde, PhD in English from Tufts University. Hyde served as the sub-editor for Walter Houghton on The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, a five volume (1974-1980)compilation of more than thirty leading British-Scottish-Irish magazines published between 1800-1900. In that capacity he conducted extensive research on anonymity as well as the use of pseudonyms, initials, pen names, and other authorial disguises. He successfully identified Mary Shelley as the anonymous author of dozens of magazine articles, including one in /New // //Monthly Magazine/ (1829), titled "Byron and Shelley on the Character of Hamlet."
Ren Draya, PhD, is Professor of British & American Literature at Blackburn College. Ren received her doctorate in dramatic literature from the University of Colorado, working under J.H. Crouch, founder of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Her B.A. in English is from Tufts University, where she studied under Sylvan Barnet, editor of the Signet Shakespeare series. She is editor of a new critical edition of /Othello/.
Felicia Hardison Londré is Curators' Professor of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Honorary Co-Founder of Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. She was the founding secretary of the
Shakespeare Theatre Association of America. She was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre at the Kennedy Center in 1999 and elected to the National Theatre Conference in 2001.
Carole E Chaski, PhD, is President of ALIAS Technology LLC, and Executive Director of theInstitute for Lingustic Evidenc<http://www.linguisticevidence.org/>, the first non-profit research organization devoted to linguistic evidence. Dr. Chaski earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics from Brown University (1987). Dr Chaski developed and updates the ALIAS: Automated Linguistic Identification and Assessment System in order to provide objective measurements for statistical analysis. In 1995 she won a three year Visiting Research Fellowship at the US Department of Justice's Investigative and Forensic Sciences Division, where she began the validation testing which has become an increasingly important aspect of forensic sciences since the Daubert ruling. Dr Chaski has served as an expert witness in Federal and State Courts in the United States, in Canada and in The Hague.