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American Studies Programs and Centers Committee
Report from the American Studies Programs Committee 2006
Submitted by Lauren Rabinovitz, Chair
The Committee continued its tradition of organizing a program for the Directors’ Breakfast and a separate panel on issues related to programs for the 2006 meeting in Oakland. The breakfast will feature a workshop on ethnic studies and American studies, taking up issues of curriculum development, service learning, graduate education and research, and administrative structuring of ethnic studies. The breakfast will be co-sponsored by the Committee on Ethnic Studies and led by Matthew Guterl, chair of that committee. Participants will be Lauren Rabinovitz (Iowa), Ann Fabian (Rutgers), Alberto Pulido (San Diego), and Laurio Flores (University of Washington).
The panel presentation will be about internationalizing American Studies programs and centers (“Beyond the Buzz”). Hans Bak (Radboud U., the Netherlands) will chair. Other participants are: Cheryl Lester (Kansas), Eric Sandeen (Wyoming), Maureen Montgomery (New Zealand). This panel is being co-sponsored by the International Committee. Regrettably, Jeanne Cortiel (University of Dortmund, Germany) had to drop out because the Mellon Fund for International Scholars did not help to fund her trip; both Montgomery and Bak are receiving funding. Thus, the Committee regrets that, due to lack of funding, we could not achieve the domestic-international balance we had hoped for on this panel.
The Committee completed the new on-line survey of American Studies Programs, and, with the assistance of the ASA executive office, got it online. To date, only 46 responses are in with 333 still out there. The committee will consider at its next meeting if there is more to be done to encourage completion. Simon Bronner did an excellent job of putting together the survey and facilitating its implementation.
In June, the committee learned that no nominations had been made for new committee members. Ongoing committee members developed a list of nominees, and there were more qualified ASA members willing to serve than committee vacancies. The lesson the committee learned from this experience is that there are many willing to serve but that the committee may need to be more pro-active in seeking nominations in the future.
At its meeting at the Oakland conference, the committee will consider two requests submitted asking the ASA to establish an undergraduate national honors society. This is new business, and the committee will report on this after October.
Beginning in July 2006, Janet Davis, chair of the Department of American Studies at University of Texas, became chair.
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