News

2013 Mid-winter Directors Meeting

Stuart Curran, President of the Association, called the meeting of January 25, 2013 to order at 11:30 a.m. at the offices of the Modern Language Association of America, New York City. In attendance and constituting a quorum were William T. Buice III, Doucet Devin Fischer, Neil Fraistat, Robert A. Hartley, Sonia Hofkosh, Anthony D. Knerr, George Krupp, Alice J. Levine, Marsha Manns, Leslie Morris, Jeanne Moskal, David H. Stam, and Gerald Wachs. Also in attendance was Elizabeth Dolan, Book Review Editor of the Keats-Shelley Journal. Absent with excuse were Steven E. Jones, Alan Richardson, Susan J. Wolfson, and Sarah M. Zimmerman. The meeting opened with the review and approval of the minutes of the 2012 Annual Directors Meeting and continued with the regular reports.

Treasurer’s Report and Membership Report

(Robert A. Hartley) The Treasurer reported that the total of the balances in the Association’s accounts as of December 31, 2012 was $109,880. Subtracting unpaid obligations of approximately $8,500, the net was $101,830 compared to $98,823 at the end of 2011. The improvement was due to positive performance in the investment accounts. The Treasurer concluded that the overall financial condition of the Association continues to be sound, but that an organization with such modest financial resources needs to closely monitor its income, expenditures, and investments on a regular basis. The report was approved.

Combined 2013 memberships and institutional subscriptions as of mid-January were running 3% below 2012 (21% higher for individuals and 8% lower for institutions). These preliminary numbers are affected by timing and do not necessarily constitute a trend. Total memberships and subscriptions for 2012 were down 2.79% from 2011 (-2.84 for individuals, -2.63 for institutions), continuing the trend of recent years. The Treasurer noted that a number of renewals were still pending. After a brief discussion several members of the Board volunteered to send reminders to recently lapsed members. The report was approved.

President’s Report

(Stuart Curran) The President read a note from Steven Jones indicating that he wished to step down from his position as Vice-President and also from the Board when his term expired in May. Jones expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to serve the K-SAA, intimating that it had been both an education and an honor. The President noted that Alan Richardson was also planning to rotate off the Board in May and that the K-SAA therefore would need to appoint two new directors at the Annual Membership Meeting in May. The Directors will also need to appoint a new Vice-President at their May meeting.

Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr., Research Grants

(Doucet Fischer, Grants Administrator) The Grants Administrator announced that the Pforzheimer Grants program is now fourteen years old. The awards for 2013, once again generously underwritten by the Acriel Foundation, went to a junior faculty member and a graduate student. Matthew Borushko, an assistant professor at Stonehill College, is working on a book titled Shelley’s Romantic Nonviolence: Aesthetics and Politics in an Age of Revolution. He argues for the importance of peaceful political resistance to the development of Shelley’s literary aesthetic, ultimately placing Shelley in the intellectual tradition of nonviolence that produced Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He will use the grant to explore materials related to Peterloo in the Pforzheimer Collection. Helen Stark is a graduate student at Newcastle University. Her project, Nation-Making and Nation-Breaking: Masculinities in European Literature, 1760–1820, traces the evolution of the relationship between masculinity and the European nation, focusing on figures such as Burke, Goethe, Foscolo, and Byron. She will use the grant to study Byron’s notes on Foscolo and other primary documents at the Pforzheimer. The Grants Administrator informed the Directors about the number of applications that had been received for this competition and described the range of proposals considered. She reported that last year’s winners, Kate Singer and Thora Brylowe, had filed their reports and expressed their thanks to the K-SAA. Singer used the grant to...