Ibero-American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

President’s message, Hazel Gold (Emory University)

This year’s ASECS meeting, held in Los Angeles, CA, marked another successful encounter among scholars and teachers of the long eighteenth century. IASECS members had the opportunity to share their work on panels dedicated exclusively to the history and culture of the Ibero-American eighteenth century as well as sessions that were transnational in scope. The ensuing dialogues that emerged as colleagues discussed their current research were intellectually exciting and reinforced the sense of scholarly community that IASECS has been able to foster.

This year there were somewhat fewer sessions that were officially sponsored by IASECS or organized by our members, and the number of members attending the conference was also somewhat smaller. Such annual fluctuations are not uncommon, but perhaps for next year’s meeting in Pittsburgh, PA we will have a stronger representation of our association. The date for submission of session proposals for the 2016 meeting is June 1, 2015, and I would encourage everyone to consider either proposing a session or responding to the calls for papers (abstracts are usually due by September 15). A number of ideas for sessions were discussed at the business meeting in LA, so look for the CFPs that will be posted on the ASECS website and included in Vickie Cutting’s regular weekly e-mails.

Of course, many IASECS members are also regular participants in the annual MLA convention. The MLA recently approved an overhaul of its structure of divisions and discussion groups—now called forums— which will be rolled out with the 2016 meeting in Austin, TX. These forums will be reviewed every five years; new additional forums may be proposed starting with the 2018 convention. There will also be a new kind of session—the three-year seminar—that is focused on specialized topics that demand sustained attention beyond what is offered by the current special session format. The three-year seminar will be introduced in the 2018 convention. Forums of particular interest to IASECS members include:

• 18th-Century (Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies)

• Romantic and 19th-Century (Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies)

• Atlantic (Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies)

• Hemispheric American (Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies)

• Colonial Latin American (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures)

• 18th- and 19th-Century Spanish and Iberian (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures)

There are two points of note that I would like to acknowledge, one looking to the future and the other to the past of our society. Thanks to David Gies’s hard work and foresight, the journal Dieciocho has transitioned to an exclusively electronic format (http://faculty.virginia.edu/dieciocho/). As an open-access journal that is available to everyone, Dieciocho is assured of continuing in its role as one of the principal venues for the dissemination and exchange of scholarship dealing with the Ibero-American eighteenth century. And, thanks to Karen Stolley’s efforts, IASECS members officially recognized the the society’s founding mothers, Pilar Sáenz and María Salgado, through a generous donation made to the ASECS Shirley Bill Endowed Fund.

Just one more expression of thanks, to Betsy Lewis, who arranged our group dinner in Los Angeles at Ledlow’s: the food was terrific and the atmosphere was especially convivial. ¡Gracias, Betsy! I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference, and to seeing everyone. If you know of graduate students or fellow colleagues whose research is oriented to the Ibero-American long eighteenth century but are not yet members of IASECS, please do encourage them to contact Cathy Jaffe and join this wonderful scholarly community.

Recap of IASECS Business Meeting
Los Angeles, CA, March 20, 2015

2015 Officers:
President: Hazel Gold, Emory University- hgold@emory.edu
Vice President: Yvonne Fuentes, University of West Georgia – yfuentes@westga.edu
Executive Secretary/Treasurer: Cathy Jaffe, Texas State University— cj10@txstate.edu (3 years)
Member-at-Large: (3 years) Mehl Penrose, University of Maryland – mpenrose@umd.edu
Member at-Large: (2 years): Madeline Sutherland-Meier, Univeresity of Texas at Austin—madelinesm@austin.utexas.edu
Member-at-Large:(1 year): David Slade, Berry College— dslade@berry.edu
Immediate past President: Kathleen Fueger: kmfueger@gmail.com
President two years ago: Betsy Lewis: elewis@umw.edu
Pilar G. Sáenz Student Essay Prize & María Salgado Student Travel Grants: Enid Valle, (Chair of Committee) Kalamazoo College – valle@kzoo.edu

Members in attendance 2015
Clorinda Donato
Yvonne Fuentes
Renee Gutiérrez Madeline Sutherland-Meier
Peggy Bonds Mark Malin
Elena Deana Gloria Eive
Karen Stolley Cathy Jaffe
Betsy Lewis Ted Braun
Enid Valle Hazel Gold

1. PRESIDENT’S WELCOME
Hazel Gold welcomed the members of IASECS. She announced that IASECS members generously contributed to endow the Shirley Bill Endowed Fund in recognition of our great teachers Pilar Sáenz and María Salgado.

Regarding this endowment, Karen Stolley wrote:

Pilar, now retired from George Washington University, and María, now retired from the University of North Carolina, exemplify everything that the Shirley Bill Endowed Fund represents—excellence in scholarship, teaching, mentoring and leadership in the growing community of scholars of the Ibero-American eighteenth century.

Hazel noted that the $40 remaining from the donations will be donated to the IASECS travel funds. Thanks to Karen Stolley for coordinating this effort.

2. IASECS FINANCIAL REPORT 2014 (submitted by Cathy Jaffe, Secretary/Treasurer)
Balance January 2014 $1,952.09
Dues and donations collected:
(19 members paying dues $280
donations $740) +1020.00
2,972.09
payment out: student travel award ($300),
essay prize + Dieciocho subscription ($290),
IASECS Williamsburg concert payment ($1,500): -2,090.00
———.——
Balance December 2014 $882.09

3. ESSAY AND TRAVEL FUNDS REPORT
Enid Valle reported that there were no applicants for the María Salgado Travel Grant.

The Pilar Sáenz Student Essay was awarded to María Virginia Acuña (Universityof Toronto) for her essay entitled “Ay, infelice de mi”: Love, Pain and Passion in the Zarzuela Apolo y Dafne (c. 1700).”

There was discussion regarding offering to pay for conference registration for the winner of the student essay award.

We now have THREE prizes/grants. Please encourage your students and your colleagues’ students to apply for the student essay prize.

1. Pilar G. Sáenz Student Essay Prize ($250.00 + IASECS 1-year membership)
2. María Salgado Student Travel Grants (up to $400);
3. ASECS Registration Fee Grant (two $120.00 awards). Funds for the travel and registration grants are disbursed AFTER reading a paper at the ASECS meeting and submitting the receipts.

4. PLANS FOR IASECS NEWSLETTER AND WEBPAGE
Betsy Lewis offered to set up a basic IASECS webpage and Facebook page. We were informed that the ASECS webpage will shortly be updated and revamped. It will offer a place for affiliate societies to link their own pages. Cathy Jaffe will produce a basic newsletter to send through the list serve and to post on the webpage. The new IASECS webpage is: https://iasecs.org/

5. IASECS SESSIONS AND OTHER PANELS FOR THE ASECS Conference in Pittsburgh, March 31-April 3, 2016.
Panel proposals are due to ASECS by June 1. Suggested titles/themes for panels and those who will prepare abstracts are as follows:

1. Stories from the Archives (roundtable)(Yvonne Fuentes) ) [official IASECS session]
2. Labor, Mining, Machines, Industry (Hazel Gold)
3. Publishing Spanish Language Books: Elsewhere (Enid Valle) [official IASECS session]
4. Comedias sueltas and Popular Culture (Madeline Sutherland-Meier)
5. Eighteenth-Century Feminisms (roundtable) (Cathy Jaffe and Betsy Lewis)
6. Unfinished Enlightenment Projects (Karen Stolley)

6. ELECTION OF OFFICERS
Elections for the 2015-2106 year were held. We were reminded that our bylaws stipulate that members must be present at the convention to be elected. Our new officers for next year will be:
Vice President, Madeline Sutherland-Meier, The University of Texas at Austin Member at-Large: (1 year): Renee Gutiérrez, Longwood University (to replace Madeline Sutherland-Meier)
Member-at-large: (3 yrs): Clorinda Donato

7. NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Dieciocho is now published digitally and is free.
•  The XIX Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (AIH) 2016 conference will be in Münster, Germany, 11-17 July, 2016. David Gies, editor of Dieciocho, is currently president.
• The International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) will hold the 14th International Congress for Eighteenth-Century Studies July 26-31, 2015, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Please vote in the elections for officers of ISECS.
• Shrinking membership was a concern discussed at the ASECS business meeting and at theaffiliate societies meeting.
• IASECS members voted to raise regular dues to $20. The IASECS Constitution states:

VII. DUES
The society shall collect annual dues for membership for a calendar year, the amount of the dues to be determined at each annual meeting. Notices of dues will be mailed by the Executive Secretary in November or December of each year.

A message will be sent towards the end of 2015 informing members of the new dues structure.

• Clorinda Donato reminded us of the MLA Call for proposals,Teaching Representations ofthe French Revolution.
  Special topic: essays sought on Ibero-American Echoes. Deadline June 1, 2015.

We seek contributions from experts in Ibero-American fields (Spanish or Latin American) around the theme of The Revolution and Global Reverberations: The Impact of Emigration and Radicalism. Abstracts and CVs should be sent to the volume editors by 1 June 2015. Please send e-mail submissions to Professor Julia Douthwaite (jdouthwa@nd.edu), Professor Catriona Seth (Catriona.Seth@univ-lorraine.fr), and Professor Antoinette Sol (amsol@uta.edu) with the subject line “Approaches to Teaching the Fr Rev.” Surface-mail submissions can be sent to Professor Douthwaite at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556.

• Clorinda Donato reminded us that the journal Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture isinterested in receiving articles from areas other than British Studies. One of the SECC editors, Eve T. Bannet (University of Oklahoma) especially asked us to remind IASECS members to submit articles based on papers presented at ASECS or any affiliate society conference this year.

Guidelines for Submission: conference papers presented at regional and national meetings of ASECS and its affiliate societies between JULY 1, 2013 and JUNE 30, 2015 are eligible.
The deadline for submission is August 18, 2015.
Electronic submission is preferred: etbannet@ou.edu

Message from SECC Editor Eve Bannet:
*NEW* for SECC, vol 46 (2016): In addition to our usual practice of publishing individual papers, Call for Papers we invite panel chairs and/or participants to submit panels of 3- 4 papers (in the case of double or triple sessions on the same topic, these can be selected from different sessions). The papers should be revised into 5000-6000 word essays, and prefaced by a short introduction, situating the topic in the profession. We think that publishing at least one panel will help SECC to highlight new directions in 18C studies and give the journal some of the excitement of our conferences. We encourage those interested to send us a proposal (etbannet@ou.edu) and short abstracts of the suggested papers in advance of asking participants to revise papers– but please ensure that they are willing to revise them first.

RENEWAL OF MEMBERSHIP AND DUES 2015
To renew your membership or if you are interested in becoming a member of IASECS click here for the form

The Ibero-American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (IASECS)

PRIZES AND GRANTS: For more information about one of our three prizes and grants, click here.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture Volume 46
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture is an interdisciplinary journal published annually for the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) by the Johns Hopkins University Press. SECC publishes revised versions of papers read at national and regional conferences of ASECS and its affiliates (including the Society of Early Americanists, Early Caribbean Society, SHARP, etc.).

For the 2015-16 volume (46) the editors encourage theoretically informed, academically rigorous essays that reflect new directions for research in the field of eighteenth-century culture, including literature, history, art history, theater and performance studies, music, ethnic studies, women’s and gender studies, etc. Essays from previously under-represented disciplines are particularly welcome. Now digitized as part of Project Muse, SECC is included in the membership fees of Sponsors and Patrons of the Society, and is offered to all members at discount.

Guidelines for Submission: conference papers presented at regional and national meetings of ASECS and its affiliate societies between JULY 1, 2013 and JUNE 30, 2015 are eligible. Papers should be substantially revised from their conference version and use the Chicago Manual of Style for annotation. Submissions are normally written in English but may include other commonly-used modern European languages, and typically average 20 to 25 double-spaced pages in length. Contributions will be judged according to the highest standards of scholarship by blind review. Authors are thus asked to avoid identifying themselves throughout (any reference to one’s own scholarship should be made in the third person). The editors of SECC cannot consider papers already submitted to other journals.

The deadline for submission is August 18, 2015.

Electronic submission is preferred: etbannet@ou.edu

Hard copies can be sent to:
Eve Tavor Bannet
George Lynn Cross Professor
English & Women’s and Gender Studies
Dept. of English
University of Oklahoma
260 Van Vleet Oval, Rm 113

Norman, OK 73019-9240