SWCAS Newsletter

The 2005 meeting of SWCAS at the University of North Texas in early October marked another successful conference for our group. I thank Harold Tanner for hosting this year’s conference and he is to be commended for producing an excellent program, venue and conference facilities. We would also like to thank Mr. Keith Hudson of Seaboard Franchise Services Company for his continued support of the SWCAS meeting.

For the fifth year in a row, the Information Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston hosted a videoconference between conference attendees and a scholar in Taiwan. This year’s videoconference guest was Dr. Fu-san Huang, Research Fellow at the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, and Professor of History at National Taiwan University. Dr. Huang’s presentation was titled, “The European Influence on Taiwan in the 17^th Century: The Dawn of Formosa.” We thank Mr. Charles Chen, Director of the Information Division of TECO, for his generous assistance and financial support for the videoconference and the breakfast that preceded it. We would also like to thank Elizabeth Berry of the University of California, Berkeley for her inspiring talk on the need to advance Asian Studies at our home institutions.

This year’s conference sponsored seven panels with twenty-five paper presentations covering topics ranging from warfare in early China to the Internet in the PRC, and religion in ancient India and Tibet to Vietnamese agricultural reforms. To my mind it is always this breadth of scholarship that makes SWCAS such a great conference. I hope this trend continues, especially with the participation of new members as well as of those outside the region.

To help with the work of expanding membership and participation in SWCAS I am glad to welcome three new members to the Board of Directors: Paul Clark of West Texas A&M University, Carrie Liu Currier of Texas Christian University and Margherita Zanasi of the University of Texas, Austin. I would also like to thank Li Xiaobing for accepting the post of Vice-President, Harold Tanner for agreeing to another term as Secretary Treasurer, and Tracy Steele for accepting the responsibilities of Journal Editor.

I encourage all of you to submit your conference papers to our editors for inclusion in the next SWCAS Journal. Submission information is provided in this newsletter.

The 2006 meeting will be held at Southern Methodist University September 29-30th in Dallas, Texas. Please mark your calendars and send in the Call for Papers form for individual papers and panels to me by June 30, 2006.

I’m looking forward to the coming year and humbly solicit your ideas about how we can continue to build on SWCAS’ success. I strongly encourage each of you to discuss SWCAS participation with your colleagues and students.

Volume 5 of the SWCAS journal containing articles from the 2003 and 2004 meetings has recently been published. We all thank Dr. Hans Stockton for all his work in publishing the most recent installment of the journal. We also thank SWCAS board member, Dr. Li Xiaobing for obtaining an ISSN listing for the SWCAS Journal.

Back volumes of the Journal are still available to dues-paying members. If you have not yet paid your dues, you may obtain a copy of the journal by doing so as soon as possible. Additional copies of Volume 2-4 are available at $10.00 each. Please note, however, that supplies are limited and that the available copies will be distributed on a “first come, first served” basis.

To obtain a back issue, please contact the SWCAS Secretary-Treasurer, Harold Tanner: tanner@unt.edu.

The papers should be single-spaced, 1-inch margins, with endnotes (not footnotes), using typeface New Times Roman, 12-pitch, and in MS Word. Papers should also conform to the Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions should not exceed 40 pages including endnotes.

As announced in the President’s message above, the 2006 meeting will be held at Southern Methodist University in Dallas on September 29 – 30, 2006.

As the date of the meeting approaches, check the SWCAS website for announcements and information. I welcome all comments and suggestions.

All members are strongly urged to check the SWCAS web page from time to time. The URL is: http://www.trinity.edu/org/swcas/home.html. Current and past issues of the SWCAS newsletter are available on the page, as are the by-laws of the organization, calls for papers, information about the organization, a membership directory, updated information on the annual meeting, and other material. The website is a particularly important source of information as you plan your attendance at the annual meeting. Webmaster Stephen Field generally posts preliminary schedules, hotel information, maps and other relevant information on the website several months in advance of the annual meeting.

SWCAS dues are $15.00, which entitles the member to the biannual newsletter, a membership directory, and a copy of The Journal of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies. Membership is calculated on an academic year basis. We suggest that you make a habit of paying your dues in September or October—if you plan to attend the annual meeting, simply bring your checkbook and do the membership payment at the conference registration table.

If you have not paid your membership dues for the 2005-2006 academic year and would like to do so by mail, please fill out the membership form and send to: