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Regional Chapters Committee

Regional Chapters Committee 2004

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON REGIONAL CHAPTERS Submitted by Jeffrey S. Miller, Chair, October 4, 2004

MEMBERSHIP

Members of the Regional Chapters Committee include:

JEFFREY S. MILLER, Mid-America ASA, Augustana College (June 2006)
RENEE BERGLAND, New England ASA, Simmons College (June 2006)
THOMAS BONNER, Southern ASA, Xavier University (June 2007)
DONNA M. CAMPBELL, Pacific Northwest ASA, Gonzaga University (June 2005)
RENNY CHRISTOPHER, California ASA, California State University,
Channel Islands (June 2005)
DALE COCKRELL, Kentucky-Tennessee ASA, Vanderbilt University (June 2007)
ANNA MAE DUANE, Metropolitan New York ASA, Fordham University
(June 2005)
DONALD E. GRECO, Texas ASA, Baylor University (June 2005)
JOHN HADDAD, Mid-Atlantic ASA, Pennsylvania State University,
Harrisburg (June 2005)
MARK HELBLING, Hawai’i ASA, University of Hawai’i, Manoa (June 2007)
ALEX LUBIN, Rocky Mountain ASA, University of New Mexico (June 2006)
JANE E. SCHULTZ, Great Lakes ASA, Indiana-Purdue-Indianapolis (June 2007)
MARTHA SWEARINGEN, Chesapeake ASA, University of the District of
Columbia (June 2006)
Executive Director: JOHN F. STEPHENS, ex officio, American Studies
Association

REGIONAL CHAPTERS’ ANNUAL CONFERENCES, 2004

The following regional chapters held annual conferences during the 2004 calendar year:

CHESAPEAKE: April 17, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Open theme;
graduate and undergraduate research presentations.
KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE: March 19-20, Fall Creek Falls State Park, Tenn. Open theme.
MID-AMERICA: April 17-19, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan. “Creating Communities: American Studies, Indigenous Nations Studies, and First Nations Peoples.”
MID-ATLANTIC: April 2-3, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Penn. “American Media in Interdisciplinary Perspectives.”
NEW ENGLAND: April 16-18, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass. “Global New England.”
NEW YORK METRO: October 30, New York Historical Society. “From Tea
Parties to Free Speech Zones: Activism and American Culture.”
PACIFIC NORTHWEST: April 15-17, Ka-Nee-Ta High Desert Resort, Warm
Springs Reservation, Ore. “Locations and Dislocations in the American Northwest.”

REGIONAL CHAPTERS’ ANNUAL CONFERENCES, 2005

The following chapters have announced their 2005 conferences:

GREAT LAKES: March 18-19, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, Ind. “Practices of Empire.”

KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE: April 8-9, Cumberland Lake State Resort Park, Jamestown, Ky. Open theme.

MID-AMERICA: April 15-16, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn. “Worlds Within/Worlds Without.”

MIDDLE ATLANTIC: April (specific dates to be announced), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Theme to be announced.

NEW ENGLAND: September (specific dates to be announced), Worcester, Mass. Theme to be announced.

OTHER REGIONAL CHAPTER ACTIVITIES

CHESAPEAKE: CHASA is continuing its Annual Fall Lecture that will rotate throughout the region’s schools.
NEW ENGLAND: The chapter is a co-sponsor of the American Studies Distinguished Lecture Series held at Penn State-Harrisburg.
NEW YORK METRO: NYMASA continues its popular Book Salon series with discussions of recent books in American Studies scholarship.

ASA REGIONAL CHAPTERS’ EXHIBIT BOOTH

For the seventh year running, the RCC will sponsor an Exhibit Booth in the Book Exhibit. Jeffrey Miller chairs the Booth Committee, which has publicized the booth in the ASA Newsletter and on the webpage. The booth will be fully staffed throughout the conference by members from at least six Regional Chapters. Chapters will bring examples of their activities, such as chapter newsletters, calls for papers, journals, and annual conference flyers were available for browsers. This year, the Regionals booth will also act as host for international ASA journals and announcements.

ASA REGIONAL CHAPTERS’ WEBSITE AND HANDBOOK

The RCC continues its new presence on the ASA Website, thanks to the ASA staff. By clicking on the heading “Resources,” web viewers may proceed to the following options:

 Contacts and general information about chapters
 Regional Chapters Committee Members
 Chapter Officers
 Individual chapter web pages
 Links to the on-line Regional Chapters’ Column for the ASA Newsletter
 Links to the Handbook

The on-line Newsletter is updated continually, and changes in chapter information can be sent to the ASA staff as needed. Regional chapters are responsible for maintaining their own web pages.

Handbook revisions continue to be a topic for discussion.

INTERCOMMITTEE ACTIVITY

At the 2003 annual meeting, the Regional Chapters Committee (RCC) met with Laura Barraclough and Patricia Roylance. of the Graduate Students Committee to continue discussion of the best way to involve graduate students in chapter activities. The RCC continues to support the Graduate Students Committee through participating in the Hospitality Lounge and Mock Interviews. Several chapters noted that graduate students comprise an important part of their membership and encouraged the Graduate Students Committee to remind students that they are welcome to present papers at Regional Chapters’ meetings. Many chapters—Chesapeake, Mid-America, New England, Southern, and Texas among them—offer monetary prizes to the best student papers presented, hoping to stimulate graduate student participation.

In the hope of forging new and creative alliances with other areas of American Studies, the RCC this year is planning to meet with representatives of the International Committee and the Task Force for Public Practice in American Studies to discuss ways in which regionals, international ASAs and public organizations can work mutually to further individual goals.

In other matters, the chair of the Regional Chapters Committee looks forward to attending the All Chairs meeting in Atlanta.

REGIONAL-NATIONAL COORDINATION EFFORTS

At the national conference in Hartford, members of the RCC visited with ASA President Amy Kaplan and President-Elect Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Both presidents helped conduct a lively discussion on the present and future of the ASA and regional chapters. Dr. Fishkin invited the chair of the RCC to attend the Council meeting in Atlanta to further discuss issues of concern for the regionals. The chair looks forward to that discussion.

REGIONALS COMMITTEE/ASA COUNCIL TALKING POINTS

The online ASA Handbook notes that in 1990, regionals chapter representatives discussed a series of common problems: the difficulty of maintaining communications and programs over large areas of the country, the lack of doctoral-level programs and leadership, the need for outreach strategies to add members from other disciplines and non-academic careers. At last year’s meeting of the Regionals Committee, current chapter representatives discovered that the more things change, the more they stay the same. As a result, we asked for a meeting with the ASA Council to discuss issues the regionals are now facing and to see what solutions might jointly be considered. It is not our intent to drop all the problems of the regionals on the doorstep of the Council in a flaming bag and run away - some are organic both within specific regions and within the concept of “regionals” as a whole. But there are some areas in which regionals feel the Council can provide counsel and leadership. We want, following a brief introduction to the regionals, to bring up three areas of discussion.

* Conferences
Regional conferences provide opportunities for American Studies scholars that even the national ASA cannot. Several recent conferences have had focused themes, plenary speakers and pedagogical panels that open up the field in innovative and productive ways. (I will provide specific examples at the meeting.) Regional conferences also provide graduate students more focused meetings with and direct feedback from scholars, as well as (in some regionals) opportunities for publication. Attendance, however, at regional conferences is not always what planners feel it should be, in part for reasons discussed below, but also in part for what may be an overly conservative notion of what a conference should be. Several regionals have tried some innovative connections and plans; others are under consideration (examples to be given). We would like to hear the thinking of council members about ideas to energize and (when necessary) revivify regional conferences.

* Doctoral institutions/leadership

The key problem identified by a number of regionals both in terms of conferences and in terms of regional leadership is a failure of doctoral institutions in the given area to provide support for the regional organization. The situation is such that two regionals covering major areas - California and the Great Lakes area - are close to moribund because of a less-than-benign neglect on the part of the several key doctoral programs in each region. Other healthy regionals, however, have also voiced concern about the unwillingness of doctoral institutions to participate in regional matters. The effects of this are particularly significant in two ways: First, graduate students, a constituency that regionals would very much like to serve and very much feel they should serve, know little of regional activities and therefore cannot participate in any number of ways that would be important to their careers. Second, the lack of involvement by scholars at doctoral institutions means that much of the groundwork in regionals must be done by those at state universities or four-year colleges. This is beneficial, in that it allows scholars not involved at a national level to be active in running a regional organization. But it also means that much of the work of regionals devolves to people who have teaching and research loads, without institutional support, that limit the time they can spend on the organization. We would be interested in hearing from the Council about ways in which regionals can involve doctoral institutions…and, perhaps, why doctoral institutions are not interested in regionals.

* Finances

Many of the issues raised here can be addressed by the old Cool Hand Luke line: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Communications, however, cost money, as of course do the program activities of a given region. Several regionals are moving toward on-line newsletters, listserv announcements and other devices that get around printing and snail mail costs. But establishing those on-line devices isn’t free either. And this doesn’t address the ever-rising expense of conferences and meetings, whatever forms they might take. According the ASA Handbook, the rebate offered by ASA to regionals was raised from $3 to $4 per member in 1994. Regionals, particularly those without journals that act as income sources, are finding that that is simply not enough to cover expenses any longer. One regional is even considering adding its own fee to cover anticipated annual costs. The Regionals Committee would ask that the Council consider raising the rebate to $6 per member (at an annual COLA of 3 percent, the $4 in 1994 should now be c. $5.50), and that adjustments to the rebate be considered every five years, in consultation with the Regionals Committee.

The Regionals Committee is sincerely grateful for the opportunity to meet with the ASA Council, and we look forward to your ideas, suggestions and assistance.

Respectfully submitted,

Jeffrey S. Miller
Chair, Regional Chapters Committee