Minutes for Board Meeting - January 2011

Minutes for the ACLA Board Meeting
8-10 AM Saturday 8 January 2011
Omni Hotel, Los Angeles
Present: Bermann, Bernstein, Brodski, Chen, Eckhardt, Felski, Hayot, Kristal, Lionnet, Newman, Richmond-Garza, Satar, Saussy, Seigneruie, Slaughter, Walkowitz,

1. Approval of 4/2/2010 minutes (Richmond-Garza: Hayot moved/Walkowitz seconds/unanimous approval)

2. Financial, Fundraising and Membership Report (initial numbers for 2010, Richmond-Garza)

a. Discussion of reduced rate for multiple departments of a single institution

b. Motion to send regular reminders to non-current institutional members

c. Motion: The ACLA will offer a 50% discount to academic units at a single institution when more than one joins ACLA in any given year. (Chen moved/Eckhardt seconded/ unanimous approval)

3. Report of the Governance Committee (Hayot)

a. Report on October 2010 meeting in New York and on the appropriate schedule for considering the proposed changes.

b. Report on proposed changes and rationales for those changes: all information posted at http://acla.org/governance/

c. Committee moved that the proposed changes be brought to the membership for a vote. The motion was unanimously approved, and the changes will be presented to the membership for their vote at the April 2011 business meeting in Vancouver

d. Discussion of transition plan. Motion: As part of the transition the incoming president in 2011 will serve a 1-year term, as will the incoming first vice president, and the committees will be implemented in a staggered manner. (Eckhardt moved/Slaughter seconded/unanimous approval)

e. Discussion of additional issues such as a partial travel subsidy for board members and need for longer board meetings on the Thursday afternoon before the annual conference.

f. Proposed changes to be posted on the website with a blog for comments.

4. Report of the President (Saussy)

a . Results of the 2010 elections: VP: Lois Zamora (University of Houston) Board Reps: Jessica Berman (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) David Damrosch (Harvard University) Anne-Lise Francois (University of California at Berkeley) Sharon Marcus (Columbia University) Sophia McClennen (Pennsylvania State University) Student Reps: Marina Antic (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Fatma Tarlaci (University of Texas at Austin)

b. The new home for the Secretariat will be the University of South Carolina at Columbia with Alexander Beecroft as the new Secretary-Treasurer (Beecroft attending via conference call)

i. USC will provide office space and graduate student support ii. ACLA will provide the salary for a full-time staff person for daily administrative tasks and financial management ($32,000/annum with USC covering fringes)

c. Discussion 2012 conference: Karen Newman and Susan Bernstein confirm that Brown is likely for 2012

5. Report of the Vice-President (Lionnet)

a. Expression of thanks to Hayot and his governance committee for their work

b. Discussion of possibility of Paris for the 2013 conference

i. Timing, costs of travel/accommodations, attraction of new participation from Europe

ii. Need to survey membership including student members

iii. Need to consult with ICLA about their future meetings

6. Update on ACLA 2011 in Vancouver (Seigneurie)

a. Attempts are being made to limit the number of participants to 1,500; 14 seminars have been rejected as well as a number of individual papers

b. Proposal to survey membership about the seminar proposal, paper placement system, and the selection criteria

c. Discussion of the special events planned for the conference and of the need to include Canadian content

d. Confirmation that the plenary events should be open to the press

7. Report of the Journals Committee (Walkowitz)

a. CL remains the official journal, and ACLA has an agreement developing with CLS

i. ACLA will contribute $5,000 annually to CLS for joint projects, including publishing the annual prize citations, possible publication of plenary events from the annual ACLA conference, issues including special topics and fora, etc.

ii. In addition to special issues in 2012/14/16 CL will publish the following: presidential letter and biannual presidential address

iii. One more member of the committee to be selected from among the newly elected board members iv. Thanks offered to Beebee and the ACLA committee for their work

8. ACL(x) Planning Report (Hayot)

a. Proposal for an ACLA-sponsored conference with a focus on innovation

b. Penn State University to sponsor a first conference in fall 2011 with an aim for 50 participants ($25,000 to be contributed by Penn State, participants to be ACLA members, an ACL(x) committee to be constituted to oversee this ideally annual event)

c. Motion: The ACLA should sponsor ACL(x) (Slaughter proposed/Berman seconded/ unanimous approval)

d. Motion: The ACLA should contribute $5,000 (Slaughter proposed/Berman seconded/ unanimous approval)

e. Slaughter appointed as the ACLA representative to the conference committee

9. Discussion of the MA and UG Presidential Prizes: low submissions for 2010 and 2011

a. The new institutional membership policy may increase submissions.

10. Student Representatives Update (Patel and Sattar)

a. A roundtable has been proposed for the Vancouver meeting: “Looking Beyond the Academic Job Market,” and volunteers and suggestions are requested.

Meeting adjourned 9:46AM

Minutes for Board Meeting - January 2011

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