In spite of a long history of academic creativity there is, within the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, still space for innovation. One of the novelties is our Academic Seminar introduced at the conference “Shakespeare-Tage” in April 2003. From now on, this Seminar will be held annually at our spring conferences.

The Seminar wants to provide young scholars with ample opportunity for discussion. Within three hours there are six short papers of 15 minutes each that should be hypothetical rather than exegetical in matter. Participants are invited to give vent to their spontaneous overflow of powerful academic opinion. The topic of the Academic Seminar is related to the respective conference topic, yet there is, for the sake of a focussed discussion, a thematic restriction onto special aspects of the subject.

Wissenschaftliches Seminar Online is intended as the documentation of the Academic Seminar. It presents to the public the ideas that have been formed in the discussions. However, it is also to be understood as an opportunity especially for the younger generation of scholars to publish their research results.

Articles in Wissenschaftliches Seminar Online are in HTML-format conforming with the general website design. There is also available a full-layout, paginated PDF-version of each issue, which should be used for printing and citation.

Christina Wald, Felix Sprang, Jens Mittelbach