The second annual UBC Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference (USC) took place last week in Irving K. Barber, featuring seven presenters from Canadian universities.
The conference was created last year by CJ McGillivray, a fourth-year honours English literature student with a passion for early modern studies — and, of course, Shakespeare — who felt “a shortage of opportunities for student presenters — specifically in the arts.”
For English students, there seemed to be only two possible outlets to present research, she said in an interview with The Ubyssey: the Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference (MURC), which is heavily science-dominated, and the English Students’ Association (ESA) colloquium, which typically only has four to five spots per year.
“In [all my] years of undergrad in English, I’d had zero opportunities to be involved in any type of showcase for my work,” said Liliana Yao, a fourth-year honours English literature student. This year, she served as a conference committee member and was a presenter at the inaugural 2025 event. Presenting her research at last year’s conference was deeply validating, she added — it affirmed that she was, in fact, doing good work in her field.
This year's event spotlighted seven presenters — and not just from UBC. Two students flew in for the conference from the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto and one more from UofT presented remotely.
The works on display were, as McGillivray put it, “wonderful examples of radical thought” — simultaneously celebrating Shakespeare and critiquing his works. “[Those are] not mutually exclusive.”
One project explored the possibilities hidden in heavy metal covers of Shakespeare’s plays as an educational tool. “If you look at the statistics, students who participate in punk culture are also the ones who are not doing that well in school,” said Eva Chaudhary in her presentation. She suggested punk could be a way to disseminate “literary knowledge to youth who might benefit from non-traditional learning approaches.”
Another piece by Olivia Richards centred on what the structure and metre of Iago’s lines in Othello reveal about his dishonesty. The presentation was aptly titled “Iamb Not What Iamb,” in reference to iambic pentameter.
Those with less knowledge of metre or iambs could still find footing in the research on modern reimaginings of Othello in Jordan Peele’s film Get Out and Toni Morrison’s play Desdemona. Presenter Lian Lo argued that these works “reimagine Othello into a story of Black and African survivance.” The word, she explained, is a term used by Anishinaabe cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor “as the creation of native presence over absence, nihility and victimry.”
This was by no means a comprehensive list of the projects presented; there were many more, including research on the role of servants in Shakespeare’s tragicomedic murder plots, on using botanical imagery “to explore the implications of political violence” in Titus Andronicus and Richard II, and two more on Othello.
The surprisingly high proportion of research on this play was in part due to Dr. Dennis Britton’s honours seminar “Othello and Black Reimaginings,” which many of the UBC presenters had taken.
The conference, as McGillivray said in her opening words, was about “exploring the curious tensions between literary analysis and live performance.” Thus, between presentations, there were three live performers (students from UBC and Langara College) who delivered monologues from Henry V, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear.
Attendees could also play a few games during breaks — “Who said it: Taylor Swift or William Shakespeare?” — along with printed mini-quizzes from the Folger Shakespeare Library and surveys where attendees could vote for their favourite plays (of Shakespeare’s, obviously).
Last year’s conference was much smaller in scale. The committee consisted of only McGillivray, and the call for papers was limited to students from UBC Vancouver and Okanagan. But this year, there was a “radical change” in numbers — the organizing committee grew to six people, they opened up submissions for undergraduates or recent graduates from across Canada and they had a higher turnout. More professors were also in attendance this year, including Britton and Dr. Stephen Guy-Bray, whose scholarly work and classes are often in conversation with Shakespeare.
This shift in scale, Yao said, came along with a shift in energy. This year, she felt students were “much more eager to jump on opportunities and show more spirit in the English department.” Speaking with presenters, that eagerness was evident.
“I think Shakespeare would love what’s happening [at this conference],” said Richards. “[We’re] contributing to a conversation that’s been going on for 500 freaking years, and I think it’s really cool that new voices can keep chiming in and harmonizing with the things that have already been said — and building on so much history.”
In May, all of the current committee members will be graduating, with some moving abroad. But McGillivray is looking for “someone to take on the reins next year,” and continue the conference. “Students are hungry for opportunities and for community,” she said.
Humanities programs are facing shrinking resources and enrollments along with growing pressures to prove their “practical” value. But "Our doubts are traitors / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt,” Shakespeare wrote in Measure for Measure, and if there’s one thing the USC made obvious last Wednesday, it’s that humanities students are done doubting the value of their own work.
