Letter from President Ruben Espinosa

Early last fall on a visit to the Folger, I found myself reflecting on how far our field has come in the last several years. Walking into the beautifully renovated exhibition hall, I was immediately transfixed by Fred Wilson’s stunning black mirror installation. I took it in and then took a beat. As I wandered around that room, I felt that our field was bolder and more ambitious. Indeed, Shakespeare studies has undergone a sea change since I first entered the profession. Standing in that exhibition hall, I felt energized and hopeful.

But stepping out of the Folger, I caught sight of the Capitol, and then my heart sank. The U.S. presidential election was still ahead of us at that point, but memories of the violent insurrection of January 2021 washed over me. I knew that whatever the result of this election cycle, our nation was about to undergo a sea change of its own.

The elections are now behind us, and here we are. Amid the polarized political landscape and with higher education under consistent threat, feelings of insecurity often mire our personal and professional lives. For many of us, this is a time of deep uncertainty for our future. For many of us, hope feels distant—Shakespeare feels distant, insignificant even. I realize that this isn’t something that the President of the Shakespeare Association of America should admit, but I only do so because what I want to say is that I don’t want the work that we do to feel insignificant. The truth is that the SAA has served as a source of promise and inspiration for me over the years. Many of my dear friends and colleagues have worked deliberately and tirelessly to shape the SAA into a hospitable, supportive, and energizing organization. Many members describe it as their intellectual home. I want to honor that. I want to ensure that the SAA feels significant to you for many years to come.

At our last meeting of the SAA in Portland, I was impressed once again by the breadth and quality of work that our members are doing. Attending panels, auditing seminars and workshops, and engaging in casual conversations with colleagues filled me with fresh ideas and left me eager to revisit my own research and teaching. The SAA so often feels like a haven of sorts—it offers an opportunity to be a part of something that is meaningful, forward looking, and bigger than us. But the fate of our field feels unreliable in many ways. The truth is that it has felt precarious for some time now, but it is certainly magnified at present. We are in a moment, and we need to recognize it and then we need to commit to supporting our beloved organization and each other.

In the aggregate, the work of our SAA members illustrates the expansiveness and reach of our research. It is dizzying and invigorating. What I have valued over the years in my experiences on the SAA Board of Trustees and in my current role is the wholesale commitment to assuring that we attend to the needs and interest of all our members in earnest. The SAA is a capacious organization, and this is all the more reason that our ability to foster a strong sense of community is so remarkable. It is this facet of our organization—the community we have built—that I hope persists well into the future. My time as President of the SAA is finite (even if I’ll be the first to serve the newly implemented two-year term), and so I want to be sure that you always consider the SAA your home.

What lies ahead of us is unclear. But in the way Fred Wilson’s black mirror invites us to consider the past and present simultaneously, we need to be attuned to the way the efforts of those who came before us have paved the road for the SAA of today. We need to respect and honor those efforts as we look to the future of our field, and we must recognize that the urgency of this moment demands our collective struggle. In the SAA, we have managed to build something truly

special, and in the face of the many changes we will undoubtedly encounter in the years ahead, we must work purposefully to sustain the vibrancy and the values that have come to define our organization. It is my sincere privilege to be able to work together with you—with all of you—toward this end.

Sincerely,