Congratulations to Hans Stockton, University of St. Thomas, and Xiaoping Cong, University of Houston, for the success of the 32^nd Annual Meeting of SWCAS.

 

Xiaoping Cong did an admirable job on local arrangements, including obtaining significant funds for travel grants from the Department of History and the Tenneco Lecture Series.  On behalf of SWCAS, I would like to thank the University of Houston for its support that allowed students and non-tenured faculty to attend the conference.  Their generosity allowed Gang Zhao, a graduate student from Johns Hopkins University, to travel to Houston where his paper, “Ending the Tributary Trade System: The Kangxi Emperor’s Reform to the Chinese Trading Institution in 1684,” was awarded the graduate prize for excellence.  In his dual capacity of SWCAS president and conference program chair, Hans Stockton broadened conference participation to include the greater Houston community by obtaining a generous gift from Mr. Keith Hudson of Seaboard Franchise Services Company to underwrite the meeting.  In addition, I would like to thank once again the Information Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office-Houston for their continued support.  This year they sponsored a breakfast and videoconference with Dr. Jaw-ling Joanne Chang of the Institute of European and American Studies of Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

 

This year’s conference included 10 panels and 28 papers.  The keynote address was presented by Professor Benjamin Elman of Princeton University  and board member of AAS China/Inner Asia Council .  It was a pleasure to welcome SWCAS members as well as faculty and students from universities across the nation.  Traditionally, panels focus on East Asia, but it was a wonderful change to have several papers on South Asian topics.  I hope that we can continue this trend in the future.

 

I would like to welcome two new members to the board.  Rina Verma Williams from the University of St. Thomas will serve until 2005 and Xiaobing Li from the University of Central Oklahoma will serve until 2006.

Congratulations and heartfelt thanks to Wing Chung Ng of the University of Texas at San Antonio for all his work as editor of The Journal of Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (v. 4).  The volume is now available from Harold Tanner.  I invite everyone to submit their papers from this year’s conference to be reviewed for The Journal of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (v. 5).  Papers should be sent to journal editor, Hans Stockton, no later than February 27, 2004. 

The 33^rd Annual Meeting of SWCAS will be held at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas on October 8 and 9 of 2004.  Please mark your calendars and send in the Call for Papers form for individual papers and panels to me by July 30, 2004.

 

Dr. Tracy Steele

Department of History

Sam Houston State University

Huntsville, Texas  77341-2239

Tel: (936)294-1480 (voice mail)

Fax: (936)294-3938

e-mail: his_tls@shsu.edu