Developments and Plans

Developments and Plans The Spring (1971) Meeting of CHINOPERL The annual meeting of CHINOPERL will be held at Cornell University on Thursday and Friday, 1 and 2 April 1971. We are proposing that a few hours be devoted to a loosely structured seminar dealing with the practical problems of field collection work. Several of our members have now had practical experience in CHINOPERL-type field research and it seems eminently important to hear what they can tell us on the subject. From preliminary conversations and correspondence it is clear that field recording of CHINOPERL materials is going to introduce most of us to a set of problems in human relations, equipment control, and research design for which the average academic curriculum has not provided sufficient advance preparation. Many of us have already faced and overcome some of these problems with varying degrees of success and everyone can profit by hearing the details. Given the fleeting nature of much of the material within our fields of interest it is doubly important that our field recordings be done as well as possible the first time; in many cases there simply won't be a second time. Anyone with something to say on this subject should come prepared to talk, and also to demonstrate any points with samples of recordings, photos, or whatever. The rest of our time will be used for papers and discussions on any pertinent subject suggested by our membership. We still have room for additional topics and would be glad to hear from volunteers. The final program will be distributed in March. A business session will be devoted to such things as elections and financing. On the subject of financing it is necessary to inform you all that CHINOPERL has very limited funds. We cannot support transportation costs; we expect to be able to subsidize partially costs of meals and lodging for those attending the annual meeting. Our meeting has been scheduled to follow immediately after the Association for Asian Studies, which will be held in Washington Monday through Wednesday, 29 to 31 March; as in previous years, our hope is that many of you could include the Ithaca, New York, stop in your round-trip ticket to the AAS meetings and save a substantial amount on the air fares. Also, we would like to think that some of you can 7 get assistance from your home institutions by presenting papers at CHINOPERL meetings. Cornell will again do everything possible in the way of reservations and scheduling. Our program for 1 and 2 April is tentatively made up of the fo~lowing sessions: 1. Problems in the' analysis of drum-singing, by Professor Stevens and students from University of Toronto. 2. Analytic demonstration of the techniques of sheng roles in Peking Opera, by Professor Ta-chung Liu of Cornell. 3. Seminar on the chanting of poetry and prose, with Professors Y, R. Chao and Hsi Ch'eng. 4. Seminar on field problems associated with CHINOPERL collection projects, chaired by Professor John McCoy of Cornell and with the participation of every member with experience to contribute. 5. Business session. We feel that this leaves enough time in our two-day schedule to permit us to hear papers or reports by other members who might want to appear on the program. Please write CHINOPERL at once if you have something to contribute to the April meetings. Also, if any of you have last-minute changes in your plans, such as a decision to attend or cancel a reservation, please let us know as soon as possible. Write to CHINOPERL at the address on the inside front cover of this issue of the newsletter. Our Unsuccessful Quest for Outside Support As reported in our first issue of CHINOPERL NEWS,we had hoped to have the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization (CSCC) of the American Council of Learned Societies represent us in an effort to gain foundation support for our group endeavors. At their suggestion, much of our planning for the Berkeley meeting had been designed to show just what we could do in the way of organization, presentation, and targeting of our resources and priorities. Unfortunately, the CSCCnow thinks that the...