SWCAS Newsletter

Annual Meeting Minutes

March 22, 2007

Marriott Copley Place Hotel, Boston, MA

DRAFT ONLY!!!!!!

Present: Caroline Reeves, chair (New England Conference), Hyaeweol Choi and Claudia Brown (Western Conference), Linda Chance (Mid Atlantic Conference), Parks Coble (Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs), Charlotte Beahan (South East Conference), Jeffrey Barlow (Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast), Nancy Stalker, substituting for Tracy Steele (Southwest Conference on Asian Studies), Mark Caprio (Asian Studies Conference, Japan).

Dennis Washburn (New England Conference) and Mao Chen (New York Conference) arrived while the meeting was in session.

The meeting was called to order at 9:05 a.m. by the Chair.

Introductions:

The 9 initial attendees introduced themselves.

Minutes were amended and approved.

Discussion included procedures for reading the graduate student papers nominated for awards. Because the AAS often coincides with Spring Break at many schools, Committee members requested at least 48 hours of lead-time to read the papers before the meeting. A suggestion was made to disseminate the papers electronically on the COC area of the AAS website and to use that area as an archival depository for papers.

Chair’s Report

Chair Reeves discussed the National Board Meeting in Ann Arbor. She reported that AAS is doing well financially, with $250,000 from the endowment and a 4.5% takeoff from the investment. The Board voted to approve a three-year project to hire a Development consultant at around $150,000 per year. Currently, the largest source of revenue is the Annual Meeting and Publications are the largest drain on finances. Council members are asked to canvass their regions on Development initiatives.

--Chair Reeves also announced the new AAS website and partnership with Cambridge University Press, which will allow online access to the Journal of Asian Studies. The website has a professional new look. AAS will no longer get advertising revenues but costs have been cut. Ken George is stepping down as JAS editor. 3 candidates are being considered as replacements

- The 70^th annual meeting of the AAS in 2011 will be a special international meeting held in Singapore in conjunction with the ICAS. . Currently annual meeting attendance is 2500-3000 and it is anticipated that only about 10% of that number will be able to attend a meeting abroad. Because many members may not be able to attend, there will also be a special national meeting for conducting committee and council business. The international meeting is intended to demonstrate and foster an integrated Association for Asian Studies, rather than a group of American Asianists. The membership was surveyed on the idea of a meeting in Asia and responses differed widely, with many Australian members in favor. Other suggestions for locations were discussed, including Osaka, Korea and Hong Kong. Council members are requested to think about forming ideas for joint panels with Asian scholars.

- Membership & Conferences - Membership issues were a concern several years ago, but no longer appear to be critical. Chair Reeves reported membership in 2005 was 6,330 and increased to 6.627 in 2007. There were 634 new members in 2006, in comparison to 566 new members in 2005. There has been a gradual overall decline from 2003, when membership was 7004. Dues are low in comparison with other Associations. A new dues category has been added for those making over $100,000 and there is discussion of a new category for retired members. Anecdotally, it seems those who are not joining or coming to conferences are mid-career academics. There was discussion of the differences between regional dues and conference fees. Some regions do not have regional membership dues. Linda Chance asked about the possibility of obtaining discounts for dual memberships (national/regional). Jeffrey Barlow suggested raising regional dues and conference fees because funds are not as readily available. Hyaeweol Choi strongly believes the CoC sponsored panel of grad students, tied to regional conferences, should continue. Each region should provide a small prize to recruit the younger generation of scholars to participate at the national level. Jeffrey Barlow brought up that different regions have different combinations of dues and conference fees. Hyaeweol Choi said the biggest issues for regional conferences are finding hosting institutions and funding. Chair Reeves asked what kind of funding would make our participation as regions work better – money for conferences? Bringing regional members to the national conference? Money for Prizes? We can pass our ideas along to the new Development officer. Parks Coble noted that members lapse and rejoin depending on who is on the program. In recent years some subgroups, such as Chinese Military History and Business History have their own meeting, because panels are not accepted. Jeffrey Barlow discussed ASPAC’s plans for a separate South Asia conference, which has received generous financial support. Chair Reeves expressed concerns over this trend, since there is already a disproportionate number of panels per South Asianist member. Mark Caprio raised the issue of A/V and technical support. This year there were limited times and rooms for PowerPoint presentations. Chair Reeves reported that future conference fees will be raised $10 to provide LCD facilities for every room, but there will be no more TV, DVD, video, or slide facilities provided.

- Nominees for new board members are required for the New York, Southeast and Southwest Conferences. Three names for each region will be put forth in the national elections and the members of the region vote. Each member can also vote for one person in another region. Mark Caprio asked about covering additional costs for international members.

-Chair Reeves noted that AAS’ new comptroller has instituted different procedures for regional conference reimbursements. Rather than receiving a $2000 advance, regions must now submit receipts after the conference for up to $2000.

11:00 am: Visit of Ken George, JAS Editor, Jennifer Munger, JAS managing editor, and Jen Jenkins, JAS editorial assistant.

--Editor George reports that prior to the new form of electronic distribution, submissions for the year were in the high 200s, with 60% from authors in Asia. In partnership with Cambridge journals online, the journal is $45,000 in the black. AAS was self-publishing the journal before, but now Cambridge takes care of all of the advertising, allowing the AAS secretariat to act more as a membership headquarters than a production house. In 65.4 there were no SE Asia book reviews. Managing editor Munger stated that a new web based data base system for tracking book reviews is under development in conjunction with Cambridge. It will use Editorial Manager software and will be available at no extra expense to AAS. The system will provide a database of books and potential reviewers and individual members will be able to update their profiles themselves. Editor George acknowledged that reviews are not timely and they can do better. The problem has been decentralization. Books are shipped to the secretariat and must be redistributed to reviewers. There will not be any additional book reviews in the online edition. Digital reference numbers at the top of each article may eventually replace traditional citations. Editor George apologized for past production problems related to APEX, the former publisher. The new journal will allow 16 color plates per year, and possibly more online. This should attract additional submissions on art history and visual culture. The editors were asked whether the new book review system would check for the impartiality of volunteer reviewers and whether Cambridge could provide statistics on the number of times book reviews were read, as these might be helpful for tenure files. New guidelines for submission and requirements are posted on the website. Editor George will ask Cambridge to advertise in art history journals. Concerns were expressed over the provisions for proofreading. Jeffrey Barlow, who has been highly critical of JAS in the past for its failure to go online, praised the current changes under the partnership with Cambridge.

11:30am Visit of the AAS Board President Anand Yang, President Elect Liz Perry and Executive Director Michael Paschal

President Yang was unable to attend two of the regionals, but considers this one of the best AAS traditions, with the opportunity for the AAs president to meet faculty, students and high school teachers. He expressed disappointment that more people at the regionals did not belong to or attend the national and asked what the officers can do to help improve regional conferences.

- The major issues for AAS at present are 1) The 2011 international meeting in Asia. President Yang said the driving impulse behind the meeting is internationalizing the organization, not simply benefiting from academic exchange. He asked regional representatives: Does it make sense? Where should it be held? Chair Reeves mentioned our committee’s enthusiasm for Korea. Hyaeweol Choi mentioned many institutions in Korea in interested in internationalizing, including the semi-governmental agencies, the Academy of Korean Studies and the Korea Foundation. She thinks many institutions would be enthusiastic about hosting an international conference. President Yang mentioned that new Asia-based journals in English are flourishing since many Asia-based faculty must publish in English for tenure and promotion. He estimates 1000-2000 total participants for the international meeting. Chair Reeves expressed concerns about the conference timing – ICAS traditionally meets in June and this may conflict with summer programs and regional meetings. President Elect Perry mentioned that most Chinese scholars would prefer a Korean venue over Japan and that few Japanese scholars would likely travel to China. Michael Paschal noted that the conference needs to be held in a large hotel with both sleeping and meeting rooms, so that the meeting rooms are free if hotel sales are guaranteed.

- Another major issue is the change of editorship at JAS

- Mark Caprio expressed concerns that $750 flight reimbursement for COC Representatives is insufficient for those traveling from Asia. President elect Perry agreed to discuss travel expense arrangements at the next board meeting.

- President Yang discussed the hiring of a new Development Officer. Chair Reeves said that for the COC, our current priority is to obtain funding for graduate students to attend national meetings to encourage the next generation of scholars to become active national AAS members.

-Jeffrey Barlow, Parks Coble and Chair Reeves raised the issue about the difficulty of getting panels accepted at the national level. The national organization treats subsidiary panels as “Meetings in Conjunction” and only publishes these in the Addendum. Michael Paschal said that these meetings are not controlled by AAS, one need not register. This informal part of the program grows every year such that it now rivals the formal program in size.

Lunch Break

2:15 Meeting Resumes

Discussion starts with reports on the regional conferences

COC member reports on regional conference annual meetings

· ASPAC was held at Washington State University in Pullman. The meeting had over 70 papers and 18 panels and the conference broke even as a whole. There was a large group of international graduate students from Monterey that participated. The ASPAC will meet next year in Hawaii.

· ASCJ held its 10^th Annual Meeting at International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo on June 24-25. This was the first time it was not held at Sophia University. Beth Berry gave an address entitled “Why Work so Hard?” There were 34 panels with 4 papers each and lots of grad student participation. This year there were many transnational and border crossing panels. ASCJ raised the conference fee and asked for Exhibitor’s Fees. Next year the conference will be held at Meiji Gakuen

· SWCAS was held September 29-30 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. There were six panels and 21 papers, including both graduate and undergraduate students. On Friday, there was a round-table discussion on Helping Teachers Incorporate Asia into the Secondary School Curriculum. It was a small, friendly conference and President Anand Yang gave an address on his recent research. He also suggested that we schedule a joint conference in the future. Next year, the conference will be held together with the Western Conference at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

· NYCAS purposefully alternates between small college and large university venues. This year they held a small conference at St. Lawrence University on October 6-7 There were many last cancellations, which were probably due to the location. The theme of the conference was “Negotiating Identities.” Next year’s conference will be at SUNY Binghamton.

· WC/AAS held its conference at the Weber State University in Ogden, Utah on Sept. 29. It was one full day with 12 panels and 60 – 70 attendees. Next year the conference will be held together with SWCAS at the University of Utah. Hyaeweol Choi suggested that there is a crisis in regional conferences and reported that ASPAC and Western conference are exploring ways to work together/merge. She reported that it is difficult to find institutions willing to host and brought up the problems of low attendance and lack of institutional memory.

· MCAA met at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on October 20-22. There were no South Asia panels because MCAA met in conjunction with the large annual South Asia conference held in Madison. There were 40 panels and 150 attendees. A/V costs at the conventional hotel were very high. Next year the conference will be at Washington University St. Louis and the following year at St. Olaf’s. MCAA has a peer-reviewed e-journal entitled Studies on Asia that has received over 5000 hits as of October 2006. The Michigan State Asian Studies Center will host the website for the journal.

· NEAAS was held at UMass Dartmouth. There were 21 panels and the conference was well attended. NEAAS also alternates between urban and rural sites. No AAS national officer was able to attend the NEEAS. The Provost of UMass provided a welcome and keynote speech instead. From now on, The AAS president will write Thank You letters to the host institution. Participants received souvenirs including NEAAS pins, pens and notebooks. There was a large and successful Book Exhibit.

· MARAAS met on Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ from October 27 – 29. There were 34 panels and 190 registrants. The conference included a workshop on teaching Chinese language that was attended by 84 people. President Yang attended and gave an address. MARAAS made $700 on their book exhibit – each exhibitor must pay $50 and donated books are sold. There is a problem for the next year because the president did not get tenure and has returned to Japan.

· SEC was at Belmont University in Nashville from January 12-14. There were 115 registrants and 30 panels. 21 K-12 Teachers attended. One graduate paper was submitted but was not given a prize. The conference will be held at Hilton Head next year. Mark Ravina is the new president. The University of Kentucky currently hosts the website but Ravina will see if Emory will support an on-line refereed journal.

· 2007-8 Meeting dates and locations:

SEC: January 18-20, 2008 Hilton Head

Joint WCAS

& SWCAS September 20-22, 2007 University of Utah, Salt Lake City

ASPAC: June 15-17, 2007 University of Hawaii at Manoa

NYCAS: October 26-27, 2007 SUNY Binghamton

MARAAS: October 26-27, 2007 University of Maryland

MCAA: October 19-21, 2007 Washington University St. Louis

ASCJ: June 23-24, 2007 Meiji Gakuin University

NEAAS: October 6, 2007 University of New Hampshire

Chair Reeves opened the meeting to Regional Issues

- Hyaeweol Choi wants to see WCAS continue as an independent unit. She hopes to identify 5 – 6 large universities that will make an annual contribution of $500 – 1000 to WCAS to help fund the annual conference and proposed that grad students from contributing universities would not have to pay regional conference fees. Many small schools do not have the financial support to host conferences on their own. She also emphasized that the COC designated panel depends on grad papers received every year. The entire process takes three years, with the grad students first debuting at the regionals. She encouraged us to cultivate the idea of mentorship among our colleagues, i.e. that regionals are a good place to bring grad students. There is a perception among many faculty that the don’t want to attend regionals because of the low quality of the papers presented.

- Geographic overlap between WCAS/ASPAC and SWCAS was discussed in connection with the issue of mailing labels. Chair Reeves stated that the Secretariat does not mind mergers or joint regional meetings, but is wary about providing two subventions for joint meetings. Another idea was for joint meetings to be held between a regional group and a special interest group.

-Representatives were reminded to contact the AAS Webmaster, John Wilson, with information on meeting locations. They should try to plan 2 – 3 years in advance.

CoC Organizational Issues:

Chair Reeves opened the floor for nominations to the office of Vice-Chair. A vote was taken: Parks Coble was elected as Vice Chair, and Mark Caprio was elected as Designated Panel Organizer.

Outreach grants reports and proposals

Chair Reeves noted that the mission of the grants is technically for any kind of outreach, but that the website specifies K – 12 outreach. Reeves motioned that we change the mission and outreach program to read, “to enhance education about Asia at any level.” This was seconded and approved.

Five proposals were considered:

· SEC

· MAR/AAS

· MCAA

· NYCAS

· NE

Discussion ensued. Chair Reeves noted that the grants cannot be used for food. The grants are for $1500 each, but technically, regional groups are not supposed to receive a grant until they have submitted a report on use of the previous year’s grant. It was proposed that, in the future, grants would be awarded only after submission of reports. If reports have not been submitted, they must be submitted together with the application for the next year’s funding. COC Representatives will be responsible for signing off on outreach grant proposals and checking for receipt of grant reports from the previous year.

Discussion turns to the Graduate Student Panel as the CoC designated panel for the Atlanta Meeting, 2008.

Hyaeweol Choi reiterated that each regional conference should establish a prize for the best graduate student papers. The four best graduate student papers (distributed in advance of the meeting to all participants) will form the next year’s panel. A COC member with similar research interests to one of the papers should serve as discussant. Parks Coble noted that the Midwest region gives a cash prize to help graduate students travel to the meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:00 p.m., with thanks repeated to the retiring members of the committee.

Respectfully submitted, Nancy Stalker, (substituting for Tracy Steele, Vice Chair)

SECRETARY-TREASURER’S REPORT