Minutes of the Business Meeting
South-Central Renaissance Conference
7 April 2001
President Donald Dickson called the meeting to order at 8 a.m. The minutes of the previous meeting having been distributed to members as they arrived, Phoebe Spinrad moved that they be accepted without a formal reading. The motion, seconded by John Ford, was approved without dissent. (A scrapbook of photographs from former meetings circulated among members during the meeting.)
1. The Secretary-Treasurer reported that although dues-paying memberships have dropped from a high of 197 in calendar year 1998, to 128 in 2000, the Conference remains financially stable. Despite this year's particularly heavy expenses associated with the Jubilee, we enter the new fiscal year with $2,367 on hand in the treasury; the two CDs, which were reinvested last year, remain intact, the smaller one of which can be used to meet any shortfall in the coming year; and ENVIorations continues to generate an average of $1,119 a year (over the past three years). The Executive Committee will be focusing its attention during the upcoming year to "growing" duespaying membership to the ideal 200-225.
2. Tita Baumlin, editor of Explorations, urged submissions to the journal.
3. Phoebe Spinrad, editor of Discoveries reported expanded indexing of our newsletter of scholarly notes, and asked that members submit photographs from previous meetings that may be used in a special Jubilee insert that will appear in an upcoming issue. She also announced the formation of an Andrew Marvell Society which would meet concurrently with SCRC, and urged interested parties to speak with her.
4. Progarn Chair George Klawitter explained the process by which the inaugural Hunter Lecturer had been chosen, and encouraged members to nominate future lecturers to the incoming program chair. Comments from the floor commended this year's selection, the placement of the Lecture on the program, and in particular the tone which speaker Michael Schoenfeldt set for the Jubilee meeting.
5. Vice President Katherine Powers reported on the process by which the inaugural $ 1000 Essay Prize was determined and on innovations to ensure that news of next year's competition circulates as widely as possible.
6. On behalf of the Nominations Committee, John Ford proposed Katherine Powers for President, George Klawitter for Vice President, James Baumlin for Executive SecretaryTreasurer, and Marguerite Tassi and Liana Cheney for Members-at-Large. In addition, Donald Stump was reconfirmed as 2002 Program Chair, and Nabil Matar proposed for 2003 Program Chair. Louis Martz and Joan Fields were proposed for emeritus honors. David Hart moved, and numerous voices seconded, approval of the slate by acclamation, as duly occurred.
7. The President announced St. Louis University as host for our 2002 meeting, with David Murphy, director of SLU's Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center, coordinating local arrangements; the University of New Orleans and Tulane University as cohosts in 2003, with Susan Krantz and Gerald Snare co-chairing Local Arrangements; and St. Edward's University (Austin, TX) in 2004, with George Klawitter as Local Arrangements Chair. Donald Stump, incoming Program Chair, invited members to propose special sessions for next year's conference, which will take place April 4-6.
8. The president opened the floor to discussion of how we may grow our membership and ensure the continued vitality of the Conference. Suggestions included encouraging colleagues to join, bringing new graduate student members to the Business Meeting (that they may take a more participatory role in the Conference), and extending invitations to join the Conference to faculty new to the region. Discussion centered around how, in a period when electronic communication and cheaper air travel are allowing individuals to take on larger professional identities, SCRC may balance between its historic regional identity and the more national society that it is in fact becoming. Discussion recognized both the reluctance of administrators to fund a faculty member's speaking at a purportedly regional conference, and the diminished availability of travel money in university budgets in early April, suggesting that both removing the regional designation from the Conference's name and meeting earlier in the year would be to our advantage. In addition, the advantages of meeting in conjunction with an Andrew Marvell Society or a Queen Elizabeth I Society were entertained.
Time running short, the meeting was adjourned at 8:48 a.m., with the understanding that members wishing to continue this discussion could gather informally after the closing luncheon, or meet at Don Dickson's house that evening.
Respectfully submitted,
Raymond-Jean Frontain
Executive Secretary-Treasurer