American Imperialism

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The Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1783-2013

Provides a critical re-evaluation of US territorial expansionism and imperialism from 1783 to the present

[/vc_column_text][dt_gap height=”20″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”0″ bg_type=”no_bg”][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_gap][vc_column_text]The United States has been described by many of its foreign and domestic critics as an “empire”. Providing a wide-ranging analysis of the United States as a territorial, imperial power from its foundation to the present day, this book explores the United States’ acquisition or long-term occupation of territories through a chronological perspective. It begins by exploring early continental expansion, such as the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, and traces US imperialism through to the controversial ongoing presence of US forces at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The book provides fresh insights into the history of US territorial expansion and imperialism, bringing together more well-known instances (such as the purchase of Alaska) with those less-frequently discussed (such as the acquisition of the Guano Islands after 1856). The volume considers key historical debates, controversies and turning points, providing a historiographically-grounded re-evaluation of US expansion from 1783 to the present day.

[/vc_column_text][dt_gap][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1594806063949{border-top-width: 1px !important;border-right-width: 1px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;border-left-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #eaeaea !important;border-left-color: #b7b7b7 !important;border-left-style: solid !important;border-right-color: #b7b7b7 !important;border-right-style: solid !important;border-top-color: #b7b7b7 !important;border-top-style: solid !important;border-bottom-color: #b7b7b7 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”]Author: Adam Burns
Edition: 1
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 9781474402149
Price: £19.99
Publication Date: Feb 2017
Dimensions: 216 x 138 mm
Extent: 232 pages
Series: BAAS Paperbacks[/vc_column_text][dt_gap height=”5″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][dt_gap][vc_single_image image=”38121″ img_size=”full” css_animation=”fadeInRight”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”0″ bg_type=”no_bg”][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][dt_gap height=”20″][ult_buttons btn_title=”BUY YOUR COPY HERE” btn_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2FAmerican-Imperialism-Territorial-Expansion-Paperbacks%2Fdp%2F1474402135%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fdchild%3D1%26keywords%3DThe%2BTerritorial%2BExpansion%2Bof%2Bthe%2BUnited%2BStates%252C%2B1783-2013%26qid%3D1594806300%26s%3Dbooks%26sr%3D1-1|title:The%20Territorial%20Expansion%20of%20the%20United%20States%2C%201783-2013|target:%20_blank|” btn_align=”ubtn-center” btn_size=”ubtn-custom” btn_width=”270″ btn_height=”60″ btn_padding_left=”10″ btn_padding_top=”10″ btn_title_color=”#ffffff” btn_bg_color=”#7bbcb7″ btn_anim_effect=”ulta-hover” btn_bg_color_hover=”#517f75″ icon=”Defaults-chevron-right” icon_size=”25″ btn_icon_pos=”ubtn-sep-icon-at-right” btn_font_family=”font_family:Roboto|font_call:Roboto|variant:900″ btn_font_style=”font-weight:900;” btn_font_size=”desktop:18px;”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

British Association for American Studies

Annual General Meeting 2019

The 2019 BAAS Annual General Meeting was held in the Jubilee Auditorium at the University of Sussex between 4.30 pm and 6.00 pm on Friday 26^th April 2019. The meeting was quorate throughout (64 in attendance).

Minutes

The minutes of the 2018 AGM held at EBAAS at UCL were circulated. They were amended to reflect that Joe Street and George Lewis counted the votes, and Theresa Saxon and Clodagh Harrington acted as scrutineers.

The amended minutes were approved (Nick Witham proposed; Joe Street seconded)

1. Elections

Candidate statements have been available on the website as well as on display at the conference. In line with the constitution adopted in 2016, this year the process was overseen by two independent election scrutineers as well as the Elections Officer, Ben Offiler. Advanced electronic voting took place in advance. Safeguards were in place to minimise the possibility of members double voting. As ever, voting took place via the single transferable vote system with voters asked to rank their preferred candidates in order.

Chair                                                    Dr Cara Rodway (to 2022)                                 Unopposed

Secretary                                             Dr Rachel Williams (to 2022)                             Unopposed

Early Career Representative                 Dr James West (to 2021)                                   Unopposed

Ordinary Members                               Dr Lydia Plath (to 2022)

Dr Tom F Wright (to 2022)

Ben Offiler thanked all candidates for standing, and George Lewis, Josh Hollands, and Theresa Saxon for their assistance counting the votes.

2. Chair’s report (Brian Ward reporting)

As usual I want to start with a word of thanks to all members of the Executive, elected and co-opted, for their efforts on behalf of the Association this year, and to all those who have served over the three years I’ve been BAAS Chair.

In particular, as this is my farewell address, I want to offer a special note appreciation to Kate Dossett who has been a wonderful vice chair throughout my term, as well as serving as chair of the chair of the Development and Education Sub-Committee. Kate deserves a good deal of credit for many of the innovations and initiatives of which I, and I think the vast majority of BAAS members, can be proud over the past few years – not least helping to establish the Women’s American Studies Network as an important part of the BAAS universe and helping to support the drive to pay more, and better, attention to issues of equality and diversity within the Association.

I’d also like to say a huge thank-you to Rachel Williams for stepping into the role of acting Secretary of the Association in January, and to Ben Offiler, who agreed to take on administration of the BAAS 2019 elections.

Similarly, the Association is greatly indebted to Cara Rodway, who effectively continued in her post as treasurer long into the summer of 2018, and who has continued to give enormous support to our co-treasurers, Eilidh Hall and Nicole Willson.

And finally, special thanks to all those stepping down from the Exec, or at least their current roles on the Exec, at this time: Rachel (in her capacity as ECR rep), Althea Legal-Miller (who has had a special responsibility for Equality and Diversity issues), Emma Long (after an exemplary stint as chair of our Award Sub-committee), and Joe Street (who has overseen the continued, indeed escalating, success of our publications portfolio with the JAS and the BAAS Paperback series, as well as the fabulous USSO).

You’ll hear from the sub-committee chairs in due course as they report on their portfolios, so I’ll try to keep this fairly brief and just flag some highlights of the Association’s year.

Equality and Diversity

In my first year as chair, BAAS members voted to make a commitment to E&D part of our new constitution and we have continued to work to try to weave good E&D practices into the fabric of how BAAS operates.

As I said last year, and it bears repeating today, there is no room for complacency here. Formal and informal feedback, not least through the some of the responses to the BAAS Membership survey last year, which you’ll hear more about shortly, indicates all-too-clearly that we still have a long way to go, collectively, to guard against all manner of latent and overt biases in the Association’s work and to build on and extend the culture of respect, inclusivity, and support that we should all be striving to secure.

In practical terms, part of that agenda for the past three years, since BAAS 2017 at Canterbury Christ Church, has been a policy of not accepting proposals for all-male panels at our annual conference.

In Autumn 2018 we received complaints from two non-members of the Association regarding the Call for Papers for this, the BAAS 2019 Conference, which eventually included threats of legal action, if we did not rescind the policy. Consequently, BAAS commissioned Bindmans law firm to provide advice on the legality of our CFP policy, which as you know was an effort to address the historic under-representation of women in academic conferences.

The headline from the report, is that Bindmans believes our policy to be a justified and proportionate response to the issue of female underrepresentation and very unlikely to be found illegal.

However, Bindmans did offer some specific recommendations for how to clarify the goals and demonstrate the value of our policy, including a minor rewording of our CFPs. Kate will say more about that proposed amendment, which is endorsed by the Executive, under the business of the Development and Education Sub-committee. At that time, members will be asked to vote on it.

I hope that the amendment will find Members’ support. It represents a tangible, practical commitment to the E & D ideals that we espouse.

Accounts

Nicole and Eilidh will say more about our financial situation, but the Association is in good shape financially.

For Association veterans and newcomers alike, it is worth stressing that we have certainly come a long way from the situation not so long ago when the Association was perilously close to insolvency.

The relative financial health is thanks primarily to the revenue we now get from CUP for the Journal of American Studies – about which there is some exciting news that I’ll let Joe Street explain as part of the Publications Subcommittee report — and because of the generosity of the US Embassy, for whom we have continued to administer the Embassy-BAAS Small Grant Scheme.

Embassy-BAAS Grant Scheme

Indeed, I’m pleased to welcome two representatives from the Embassy to the conference and to this AGM Kim Dubois (Cultural Affairs Officer) and Anna Martz (Deputy Cultural Affairs Officer). On behalf of the Association, I’d like to express appreciation to Kim and Anna, and to their colleague Koen Van Eynde, for their support, and to Lydia Plath and Matt Shaw, who along with administrative assistant Katie Edwards, have managed the application and adjudication process extremely efficiently again this year. Also thanks to Cara Rodway and Zalfa Feghali who joined Lydia, Matt and myself on the review application panel.

Just to remind you, for the past 3 years we have administered these Embassy-BAAS Awards and they provide invaluable financial support to a wide range of scholarly, artistic, creative and educational projects, all with the common goal of promoting greater interest in and understanding of the United States.

Because the grants run on a calendar year, rather than a BAAS AGM to AGM year, we’re currently in mid-2019 cycle. But Lydia and Matt report that the first round in January 2019 generated 26 applications, of which 11 were funded to the tune of £38k.

This leaves £29.5k to disburse in the second round, with applications due on May 1.

Projects supported include a wide range of conferences, at national institutions such as Tate Modern and the British Library, and across the UK. Several projects included a strong focus on links with schools and young people, supporting civil society, and generally raising the profile of American Studies in the UK. It’s also worth commenting on the innovative formats for delivery of many of these projects, including podcasting, theatrical and dance productions and film festivals with related talks, seminar series, showcasing subject matter such as politics, art, history, gender studies, ecofeminism, and literary and cultural studies

Overall, in 2018, which included 2 rounds of applications after the last AGM, £68,265 was granted in support of 30 projects from 72 applications, including – given our geographical location – Making America: West Sussex and the United States.

In 2017, the first year of the scheme, when Jo Gill and Carole Holden managed the awards process, we were able to work with the Embassy to allocate some £81k of support to American Studies-themed projects.

That means that by the end of 2019, US Embassy generosity will have provided around £216.7k in funding support to the American Studies community broadly conceived. That is a major investment in the kind of work we do and want to see done to promote interest in and greater understanding of America in the UK.

As for the future, after granting us two extensions to the original one-year administration period, it is my understanding from Anna and Kim that the Embassy is reviewing its position on all its grants and expects to put administration of the 2020 grants out for tender again.

Although it will fall to my successor and their Exec, to make this call, it is my hope that, assuming the opportunity arises and the broad remit remains the same, BAAS will apply again for stewardship of these Awards. I can certainly say in all honesty, that being able to facilitate so much exciting and innovative work in the UK through these awards has been one of the highlights of my term as BAAS chair.

Letters of Support & Thanks

This year, I have written various letters of support on behalf of the Association to institutions and programmes in difficulty, including:

The University of Hull to voice concern about the threats to Modern Languages programmes and staff at Hull;

The library at SOAS, which as you know faces extremely draconian cuts.

The University of Keele to voice concern about the decision to end the American Studies BA Programme and to express support for Americanist colleagues and the David Bruce Centre. Here I should note that I received a full response from Shane O’Neill, PVC for Planning and Advancement at Keele, offering assurances that Keele’s Americanist staff are valued, American modules will continue to run and that the David Bruce Centre will continue to be a hub for important interdisciplinary research under the umbrella of a new Keele Institute for Social Inclusion;

I also wrote to Mr C. G. Dilworth (Pitlochry), a BAAS Member since the early 1960s who contacted Nicole Willson as co-Treasurer of the Association, because he wishes to make a small bequest to BAAS in his will. I thanked him in anticipation of his posthumous generosity and for his long-standing support of the Association.

Achievements, Announcements and events of note to BAAS members

Deaths

Death of Peter Boyle, Nottingham

BAAS stalwart who initiated the Graduate Teaching Assistantships that took BAAS student members to NH & VA. Nice obituary by Peter Ling

Recognition & Fellowships

Joy Porter (Hull)

Awarded a 2018 National Teaching Fellowship, which recognises individuals who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession in higher education;

Lucas Richert (Strathclyde)

Former winner of Arthur Miller First Book Prize in 2015 has been appointed as the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison;

Eilidh Hall, our own co-treasurer, was awarded a Fulbright-Royal Society of Scotland Fellowship to study and work at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas.

PGR Jessica Mehta (Exeter) has been awarded an artists-in-residency fellowship by the National Parks Art Foundation at Gettysburg National Military Park and a Helm Fellowship at the Lilly Library to access the archives of Sylvia Plath.

Grants

Steven Powell (Liverpool) ed, The Big Somewhere: Essays on James Ellroy’s Noir World (Bloomsbury: 2008), has been nominated for the HRF Keating Award for Best Critical/Biographical work

Alan Rice (UCLAN/co-director of the Institute for Black Atlantic Research), in February 2019 secured an EU Horizon 2020 Marie Curie Skoldowska Intra-European Fellowship grant just shy of 213k Euros, which will employ a post-doc, Astrid Haas, to work on “Black Inter-American Mobilities and Autobiographies in the Age of Revolutions.”

Also, IBAR’s Stuart Hall Fellowship student Jade Montserrat (working on a PhD on Black Atlantic and the North) won a Transport for London award as part of the Art on the Underground programme, designing 3 original works which appeared on posters throughout the network.

Some final thoughts

In signing off as Chair, I’d just like to say a few things.

During my time in office, I think we have begun to make progress, tentatively and, in all candour, belatedly, on a number of important fronts to transform the culture of the Association. I’ve already mentioned E & D issues, where we can and must continue to be proactive and strive to create the kind of professionally nurturing and personally secure environment in which all our members feel valued, respected and empowered. It’s not an endpoint in this journey at all, but the fact that 9 of the 14 members of the current Exec are women strikes me as an encouraging sign that, within the Association, notions of an old boys club are finally beginning to wane.

I also think we have begun to make BAAS activities more accessible, more enjoyable, and supportive, for man of our PGR and ECR members.

Each year we have set aside ever more financial support for PGRs and ECRs, sponsoring bespoke ice-breaker events, subsidizing or picking up the costs of various activities, offering hardship funds to defray the costs of attendance at most of the Conferences we sponsor, or co-sponsor, we’ve explored various kinds of childcare support at BAAS-related events. Similarly, bursaries for PGR and/or ECRs are a common feature of most of the projects which we fund, as they are for many of the submissions to the US Embassy-BAAS small grants schemes. We now have peer reading groups to help develop scholarship, fund the USSO keynote lecture competition that’s become a key part of the annual PGR conference, and have a variety of paid internships for work on JAS or in the BAAS archive.

Again, this isn’t about congratulatory complacency – the membership survey last year revealed how much is left to do. Rather, it is a plea to those who follow me to keep trying to find innovative and practical ways to help this cohort of colleagues as they make their way in the profession.

We all are, or should be, acutely aware of the vulnerability of vast numbers of our colleagues in the so-called ‘Precariat.’ As I mentioned at last year’s AGM, BAAS is in no position to solve the deep structural problems, rampant exploitation, and systemic inequities that plague Higher Education in the UK. Still, it should do all it can to avoid being complicit in perpetuating those problem and continue to help the emerging generation of Americanists, so they can achieve their full potential as scholars and teachers.

Penultimately, I would also like to remind you all of the importance of the work you do, as scholars and teachers of things American. The calibre of research and quality of scholarship to be found among BAAS members is extraordinary and quite humbling, as is the talent and passion for teaching about the American experience, in all its multifaceted guises. Your expertise in and informed understanding of the histories, cultures, politics, economics and evolving global relationships of the United States, your ability to present that knowledge authoritatively to diverse audiences, has never been more valuable. Your commitment to quality scholarship and your ability to share it, whether formally or informally, really matters in making the US, indeed the world, more intelligible.

Finally, I should simply like to thank the Association for giving me the opportunity to serve as its chair. I want to express sincere gratitude to all those with whom I’ve worked over the past 3 years for their counsel, sometimes their correction, but always their support. It’s been mostly a pleasure and always a privilege to occupy the role and I wish my successor the very best.

I will, of course, continue to support the work of the Association in whatever ways I can as a civilian.

3. Treasurers’ Report (Nicole Willson reporting – Eilidh Hall in absentia)

Treasurers’ Communications

This has been an unusually protracted handover period, as NW and EH did not formally take up their appointment until September 2018. NW and EH thank the executive for their patience, and also Cara Rodway for continuing to consult on matters of importance, especially in the preparation of the annual accounts and trustees report.

Membership Figures

Currently number 628 members in the online system (inc. 281 concessionary memberships); this is up by 10 from last year when there were 618 members (with the same number of concessionary memberships). Louise Cunningham is continuing to manage the member lists and to transfer information from the old Google spreadsheets over to the online system.

Account balances (as of 24/04/2019)

902. BAAS Charity Barclays Current Account £8,902.64
903. BAAS Charity Barclays Savings Account £103,720
904. BAAS Charity Shawbrook Savings Account £20,521.94
905. PayPal             £21,620.78
906. BAAS Publications Barclays Current Account £22,470

Presentation of the 2018 accounts

[At AGM – Proposed by Joe Street and seconded by Cara Rodway]

The accounts show a steadily improving position due mainly to income receivable from BAAS Publications Ltd. BAAS Publications will Gift Aid £55,348 to BAAS Charity before 30 September 2019. The reserves for the year are £155,831.

Activities since last meeting

The mandate changes on all accounts have now been completed and EH and NW now have full access (EH still needs to request access to Pubs accounts and has been unable to do this while in the US). Since receiving access to the Publications account earlier this year, the tax bill loan made by the charity to cover reserves in the Publications account has now been repaid.

Savings account (in Feb 2017, £20k of our reserves was put into a one-year fixed rate savings account with Shawbrook Bank, through the Charities Aid Foundation, with a return of 1.30% gross), this has now matured and been rolled over for another year; the interest earned in 2018-19 was £263.36. We may wish to consider transferring more money into this savings account in the coming year.

Forthcoming 

Although the admin load associated with the Treasurer role is currently split across the two Co-Treasurers, NW and EH would like to consult the other officers about streamlining what continues to be a very heavy administrative burden with the possibility of taking on additional administrative support. This was a suggestion put forward by the former treasurer.

The accounts were circulated and approved (Joe Street proposed; Cara Rodway seconded).

4. Report of the Chair of the Publications Sub-Committee (Joe Street reporting)

This is my last report as chair of the publications subcommittee. It has been nothing but a delight serving BAAS in this role and I want to thank everybody who served on Pubs Subcom; everybody at JAS/USSO/EUP/BOA for putting up with my shambling incompetence.

Journal of American Studies

Another successful and busy year for JAS. The editorial term of Bevan Sewell and Celeste Marie Bernier concluded, and they were succeeded by Nick Witham and Sinead Moynihan. I enjoyed every moment of working with the outgoing editors and thank them again for their fabulous work on the journal. I would say that I look forward to working alongside Nick and Sinead, but will leave that to my successor.

Subscriptions continue to be healthy. The end of 2018 saw a total circulation of 2,570 worldwide, which netted BAAS a healthy sum that the Treasurer has outlined. Our relationship with Cambridge University Press continues to be strong, and they forecast year-on-year increases both in circulation and income for the next five years. CUP has agreed to distribute JAS free of charge to a selection of institutions in Africa; this is an excellent initiative that will not only help those institutions immensely, but will also boost our international reach.

As this suggests, the Journal is in excellent shape. It continues to earn the vast majority of BAAS’s income. With careful management, this should ensure that the organization can expand its programmes to support postgraduates and early career researchers for many years to come.

We have agreed to a small increase in the editorial board, in line with BAAS’s equality and diversity campaign. This includes the nomination of Judith Madera of Wake Forest University; Anke Ortlepp of the University of Cologne; and Georgiana Banita of the University of Bamberg.

Proposed increase from four to five issues per year, reflecting the strength and volume of the submissions that the journal now receives, and that will give the editors greater leeway for the construction of themed issues and suchlike.

USSO – US Studies Online

USSO consistently gains thousands of visitors each month, with nearly 20,000 page views in the first three months of 2019.

USSO continues to attract a vast array of posts on too many subjects to go into here. I would, however, like to point out their excellent bookhour series that runs via their twitter account. Worth following!

Thanks to editors: Ruth Lawlor and Rachael Alexander.

It has truly been an honour and a privilege working with them on BAAS’s behalf. I have recommended to my successor as Publications Chair to explore an increase in BAAS’s funding for this important resource.

EUP BAAS Paperbacks series

Continues thanks to the excellent leadership of Martin Halliwell and Emily West. Recent and forthcoming publications include A. Robert Lee’s The Beats; Caroline Blinder’s The American Photo-Text. They’re always on the lookout for new monograph proposals and will happily discuss any ideas you have.

Sadly, Emily needed to take a step back from the series recently; Martin and EUP advertised for a replacement and the process will conclude very soon.

I wish to thank Martin and Emily for their excellent work with EUP on BAAS’s behalf.

BOA

The first British Online Archives archival fellowship took place over summer 2018. I am pleased to report that it was an unqualified success. The winning candidate Rose Pearce spent ten days at the National Archives researching links between the UK and Black Power activism. Her findings will be published as an online archival collection by BOA in the near future.

My successor will soon be opening discussions with BOA over the next fellowship: keep your eyes out for information in the BAAS newsletter.

5. Report of the Chair of the Development and Education Sub-Committee

Develop a Code of Conduct and Harassment Policy for BAAS Conferences.

BAAS has agreed to fund a conference at the British Library in 2019 called ‘The Future of the Conference’. The conference will bring together a range of experts including the Charity Commission, UCU and legal advisers, alongside other professional associations including HOTCUS, BRANCA, SHAW, BRANCH and BAAS members to explore ideas for developing a more inclusive conference culture in the 2020s. It would also help BAAS and other professional associations within American Studies think through ways to address the diversity problems highlighted by recent memberships surveys within BAAS and HOTCUS as well as complaints of inappropriate and bullying behaviour  on one particular panel at EBAAS in April 2018. BAAS published an anti-harassment statement on its website in 2018. (Rachel Williams and Nick Grant will lead on this)

Women in American Studies Network and BAAS

The Women in American Studies Network which has held an annual lunch meeting at the BAAS Conference since 2017,  has set up a steering group made up of representatives of BAAS, SHAW, HOTCUS, BRANCH, BrANCA, American Politics Group and the British Association of Early American Historians.

This steering group will meet once or twice a year to help the organizations share ideas and collaborate on events and activities as well as develop a programme of events and an online network and database of women in American studies. BAAS has agreed to serve as the coordinating centre for the WASN steering committee, to have a designated WASN representative, to host information about and links to the network on the BAAS website and to contribute to funding steering committee meetings by allaying travel costs.

Peer-Reading Scheme for Early Career Researchers.

BAAS developed a peer reading scheme for Early Career Researchers which matches up researchers with partners to read work and offer support with writing and research. (Rachel Williams)

Schools Working Group

BAAS has established a schools working group with a budget of up to £2000 to be awarded to applicants putting on a schools event through a competitive call for papers. This has now gone live:

There are two grants available up to £1,000 each that are designed to support initiatives that would bring together academics working in UK Higher Education and secondary school teachers interested in American Studies topics. Deadline 10 May. Details on the website.

All BAAS members are eligible to apply and we would specifically welcome applications that:

• Speak to the needs of secondary school teachers and the subjects they are covering in the classroom.
• Have a clear strategy to work with state schools.
• Have a clear Widening Participation focus and address issues of representation, inclusion and diversity in UK universities.
• Tackle issues of diversity in relation to the GCSE and/or A-Level curriculum.

Membership Survey Report (BO)

The membership survey report was published in September 2018. BAAS is writing up the first in a series of reports on its findings. The first of these has been  published on the BAAS website

Conference Call for Papers

In 2018 BAAS received complaints from two individuals (non-members) regarding its conference call for papers for the 2019 BAAS conference at the University of Sussex.

The CFP makes clear that conference organizers will not accept all male conference panels.

Since one of the complainants threatened legal action BAAS engaged Bindmans, a legal firm with specialism in equalities law, to advice on the legality of its call for papers. The legal advice was that the existing policy designed to increase the representation of women at conferences is likely a lawful application of the 2010 Equalities Act.

BAAS’s solicitor did however make a number of important recommendations:

• an expansion of the rationale behind the policy in future Calls for Paper –and I will shortly present this as a motion to the AGM for discussion and I hope approval (see item 6 in the minutes).
• Second recommendation is that BAAS systematically review data on panel proposals and delegates to its conferences over the last 3-5 years This includes:

1. Conducting a review of panel proposals in recent years to ascertain
2. the proportion of women and men proposed to speak on panels
3. the proportion of women and men speaking on panels.

• The impact of the policy.

1. Looking forwards, BAAS needs to implement an ongoing process of monitoring the gender composition of panel proposals and panels at conference. This is important for BAAS to be able to demonstrate that it is measuring the impact of the Policy, and that the policy is not permanent.
2. With this in mind Conference committee of BAAS will work with BAAS Conference organizers to design a template for future conferences and the collection of data which bears in mind General Data Protection Regulations. This will likely involve conference applicants voluntarily contributing data regarding gender at the point of panel submission, which information will be kept for a time limited period.
3. Conference Policy

Motion: In response to 5.1 above, Kate Dossett proposed inclusion of the following text in future CFPs. Bold text indicates additional wording to explain the rationale for the policy:

BAAS is dedicated to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion. We will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and institutional affiliation. We will also give preference to panels that include a mix of participants from across the career spectrum (i.e., from postgraduate to professor). Historically women have been disproportionately underrepresented on panels and BAAS is taking positive action, as permitted under s.158 Equality Act 2010, to enable and encourage the participation of women. For this reason all-male panel proposals will not be accepted. BAAS may constitute an all-male panel or other presentation where absolutely necessary (but any such consideration will be other than via the call for papers procedure).

The meeting debated the motion. Points of discussion included:

• Concern over how the wording might reinforce a gender binary rather than reflect the diversity of the gender spectrum.
• Calls to clarify the phrase “BAAS may constitute an all-male panel” and discussion of eventualities which might require this.
• Members suggested that in order to make BAAS and BAAS-sponsored conferences inclusive and welcoming spaces, it would also be useful to provide guidelines for chairs and conference etiquette. It was felt that rather than providing a list of prohibited behaviours, it would be more constructive to collate and disseminate resources aimed at supporting conference organisers in creating inclusive events.
• The issue of class – as the equalities monitoring form that will now be part of the conference registration process, is there a way to gather data surrounding class, to help improve representation of people from typically under-represented socio-economic backgrounds at BAAS?

KD stressed that this policy will continue to be refined in coming years, in line with advice from Bindmans. The discussion points above will be put to the Future of the Inclusive Conference conference.

The motion to adopt the new language was put to the membership (Theresa Saxon proposed; Nick Witham seconded). The motion was carried unanimously with no abstentions.

7. Report of the Chair of the Awards Sub-Committee (Emma Long reporting)

The BAAS awards programme has run successfully again this year.  16 awards have been made in nine categories.

Many awards are offered with partner institutions and I’d like to thank them for their continued support:

• University of Wyoming who will, once again, host a fully-funded GTA student for 2 years
• University of New Hampshire who are currently hosting a fully-funded GTA student
• University of Mississippi who are currently hosting a fully-funded GTA student
• The Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello, for making it possible for one UK teacher to spend a week among the collections to enhance their teaching of Jefferson and the revolutionary era
• Arthur Miller Institute at UEA for their sponsorship of a first book prize and an article prize

I’d like also to thank all those colleagues who served as judges for this year’s awards: it wouldn’t be possible without your hard work.  Particular thanks also to Louise Cunningham and Katie Edwards, our administrators, for their outstanding work in running the Awards process.

All the awards were highly competitive again this year, showcasing the depth and breadth of work by the American Studies community.  These awards only work because people submit to them so I also want to thank everyone who submitted applications for the awards, and offer congratulations to those successful applicants.

The BAAS awards will be announced and awarded at the conference dinner this evening (Friday April 26).  A booklet containing the names of all the award winners will be available to all delegates.

In line with BAAS policy on equality and diversity, I’m currently putting together a report looking at aspects of the awards that are available to us – in particular, any gender divisions and geographical locations of applicants.  Once complete, information will be added to the BAAS website.

8. Report of the Chair of the Conferences Sub-Committee (Laura MacDonald reporting)

The 63nd BAAS Annual Conference was a joint event with EAAS and was held at King’s College London, University College London, and the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, 4-7 April 2018. There were 129 panels, 455 papers, 515 delegates, and a surplus was returned to BAAS. The Annual Conference was, as always, a place of lively debate and stimulating new research, manifested in three engaging and well-attended keynote speeches from Bettye Collier-Thomas (Temple University), Jo Gill (University of Exeter), and M. Giulia Fabi (University of Ferrara). Reflecting BAAS’ commitment to Equality and Diversity, the conference included a joint lunch session of the BAAS Women’s Network with members of the EAAS Women’s Network.  Sabina Peck (BAAS Cadbury Library intern) spoke about the history of women in BAAS and the results of her research were also on display in an exhibit throughout the conference.

America’s Urgent and Great Problems, the Annual BAAS Postgraduate Conference, was held at Northumbria University (3 November 2018). This one day event was attended by 60 delegates

and combined panels, roundtables, plenaries, and training workshops. Following the tradition of having a postgraduate or early career researcher keynote speaker, this year’s conference began with a speech from Dr. E. James West (Northumbria University).

To support BAAS work in building a more inclusive and diverse scholarly community, the Conferences Committee worked with the organisers of the 2019 conference at Sussex to pilot a Targetted Research Panels initiative, which generated 15 proposals. Funding has been awarded to the convenors of two panels, who will each organise two successive annual conference panels that will support, promote, and feature the production of research by and about people of colour, LGBTQ+, and disability communities. The 2019-20 recipients will present at Sussex and Liverpool.

Over the course of 2018 various events were awarded Small Conference Support Grants by the Conferences Subcommittee. These included:

• The Cartographic Imagination: Art, Literature and Mapping in the United States, 1945-1980 (Paris School of Arts and Culture, University of Kent, 18-19 May 2018). The Small Conference Support Grant was used to support postgraduate presenters at the event.
• Did Liberalism Fail in the United States after 1945? Identity and Conflict from Truman to Trump (University of Glasgow, 1 June 2018). Funding from BAAS was used to support a prize for an ECR or PhD to deliver a plenary at the end of the symposium, and this initiative was enthusiastically received by attendees with regards to the initiative.
• “Women and Slavery: Agency and Constraint in the Slaveholding South” (Manchester Metropolitan University, 19 January 2019). The Small Conference Grant made it possible to fully fund the participation of five postgraduate attendees.

Small Conference Support Grants have been made to forthcoming conferences:

• “Marx and Marxism in the United States: A One-Day Symposium” (University of Nottingham, 11 May 2019)
• “Arts Patronage in Modern America” (University of Oxford, 26-28 June 2019)
• “Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) Annual Conference” (University of Reading, 5 July 2019)

9. Report of the Postgraduate Representative (Olivia Wright reporting)

Thanks to Kat Webb-Bourne for her help and hard work during the PG Rep handover.

The 2018 PG BAAS conference was held at Northumbria University in November and was expertly organized by students Simon Buck and Rowan Hartland. They organized a variety of events throughout the day including a speed networking session, five panels, a keynote from James West, and a roundtable on PGR and ECR pay, job security, workload, and health and wellbeing. The latter roundtable was particularly successful and many of the delegates emphasized a desire to see these kinds of discussions held at conferences and events in the future.

There were several postgraduate events also taking place at the 2019 BAAS conference at Sussex. On the Thursday night, PGs met at The Lord Nelson pub in Brighton for a student mixer, funded by BAAS, and Friday lunchtime, students came together for a networking lunch. Over the course of the Friday, the students also had the opportunity to schedule a publishing surgery session with Manchester University Press’s Paul Clarke. Many thanks to Tom Davies and Tom Wright for organizing the events.

PG BAAS 2019 is being held at the British Library. The PG rep, Olivia, has organized the call for organizers, looking for two postgraduate students from different universities across the UK to work with the Eccles Centre team to run the conference. She received many applications and students will be notified in the coming weeks, with the Call For Papers and date of the conference released shortly after.

10. Report of the Representative to EAAS (Jenny Woodley reporting)

Members are reminded that EJAS has a continuing agreement with ProQuest, and BAAS members are encouraged to submit work for publication.

BAAS members have had recent success securing funding from the EAAS travel awards. Members should consider applying to EAAS!

The EAAS women’s network held a really successful and well-attended symposium on feminism and techno science. JW to circulate details of the next event. They plan to launch an e-journal which will be biennial to publish symposium papers.

The next EAAS conference will be held in Warsaw between 1 May – 3 May 2020 NB this has been postponed in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

In 2022, the EAAS conference will be held in Madrid w/c April 4^th (TBC).

11. Any other business

Joe Street offered a vote of thanks to Brian Ward for his inspiring leadership and stellar work as Chair over the past three years. The Executive Committee presented Brian with a gift as a token of their appreciation for his service.

The meeting closed at 6.15 pm.

British Association for American Studies

Executive Committee Minutes

The two hundred and ninety-ninth meeting of the Executive Committee of the British Association for American Studies was held at the University of Hull on January 23^rd 2020.

In attendance

Cara Rodway

Eilidh Hall

Nicole Willson

Rachel Williams

Lydia Plath

Tom Wright

Stephen Mawdsley

David Eldridge

Jo Metcalf

Minutes of the Previous Meeting.

Were approved as an accurate record.

Conferences Subcommittee: Report from David Hering (Liverpool Coordinator)

Liverpool 2020

The AGM will take place from 3:30-5pm on Friday 17th April in Lecture Theatre A, Central Teaching Hub.

We now have a room booked from 9am until 1pm on Thursday, so any time then will work for the exec meeting.

We have a full set of panels and we are currently receiving acceptances from delegates, who were notified before Christmas. We will be finalising the schedule before the end of the month and putting the programme together.

Registration will go live this week.

BAAS2020 twitter account has been set up @baas_2020 so we’re encouraging delegates to follow us on that

Sustainability – we’re aiming for an all-vegetarian buffet (excepting dietary requirements). We’re also not printing the AGM papers to save paper. There’s still some discussion about ‘conference swag’ i.e. whether a bag is a good idea. We’re aware that bags are not necessarily sustainable but there is the question of giving people things which they then have to carry around, and the question of ‘value for money’ re: registration fee.

We’re in discussion with publishers about stalls – three have confirmed so far.

We’ve sent our grant application off to the embassy.

Registration for BAAS2020 is now open at the following address: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/english/our-events/baas-2020/ Please note that earlybird rates are valid until 16th February.

– There are only 80 seats available for the BAAS dinner at Tate Liverpool (excluding institutional organisers/keynotes), so I’ve been encouraged by Cara to send out an early warning to everyone that if you’re planning to be at the dinner you should book as soon as possible. Tate was by far the best venue and will be opening up its Theaster Gates exhibition to us for a private viewing before dinner – they had a limited number of seats but we felt they were the best place, and that it would get everyone down to the Albert Dock too.

– Could everyone advertise the registration far and wide, please? I have emailed Ben about putting it in the newsletter and have announced it to our presenters and via Twitter (@baas_2020), so if anyone reading could retweet etc that would be very helpful (could the official BAAS twitter account retweet too?)

Hull 2021 (Jo Metcalf, Rachel Williams, and David Eldridge)

The Exec Com toured the UoH campus (key spaces: Brynmor Jones Library, Canham Turner building, Middleton Hall) and the Guildhall, where the dinner will take place. Key spaces have been booked and A/V/catering requirements noted.

We will continue exploring ways to run a more sustainable conference, including sustainable promotional materials/conference packs, maximising use of digital screens and conference app, increasing meat-, fish-, and dairy-free catering options.

Thanks to Alice McDermott, Claire Thurston, and Becky Day from the Faculty of Arts, Cultures, and Education Events team for their continued support and guidance.

Three keynote speakers have now confirmed their attendance:

• Claire Wardle (Hull)
• Merve Emre (JAS)
• Sarah Pearsall (Eccles)

Chair’s Business (Cara Rodway reporting)

Death of a colleague:

Dr Mary Ellison died earlier in January. She was a Fellow at Keele.  Stephen Tuck wrote to tell me and explained ‘Mary Ellison made a major, but I think little known, contribution to American history in the UK.’  Stephen has just finished writing a piece with Clive Webb on the development of Southern history in the UK (for the Journal of Southern history), and learnt that Mary Ellison had been the supervisor for a large number of high profile scholars, especially in civil rights (including Adam Fairclough and Peter Ling), as well as being a key person in the new American studies department at Keele. She wrote on a range of topics, including an interesting piece on Black women’s resistance to slavery in 1983. Larry Hudson recently told Stephen that she was an ‘inspiration as a tutor and person’.  We are in discussion about a way to mark Mary’s contribution to the field in the UK.

Events and meetings attended since the last meeting:

On 11 October I attended the UKCASA (UK Council for Area Studies Associations) AGM.  This included a presentation by Stephen Hill, Director of Research England, on the future of research funding.  Quite a positive presentation: working on the UK government aim to make research and development funding reach 2.4% of GDP by 2027 (which would mean UK spending reaches the OECD average).  Third of R&D spending is in the public sector with 2/3rds in the private sector.  Current model is to double public sector funding which will hopefully stimulate private sector spending.  Major issue is what will that do to university delivery and sustainability (e.g. factoring in real economic cost of doctoral student training – people, space, resources etc).  Emphasis on sharing out funding to places that don’t receive a fair share but still lots of unresolved issues.  Other part of the presentation was on research trends and concluded that ‘Increasing collaboration and interdisciplinary research, alongside continued focus on a broad range of impacts, are likely to characterise the research landscape in the coming years.’  Interesting to hear what other area studies associations are doing.  The most interesting suggestion was the Japanese Studies Association who are providing funding for doctoral students in their writing up year: something for BAAS to perhaps consider.

On 6 and 7 December the BAAS Postgraduate conference took place at the British Library.  It was a very successful event, despite the unusual organisational model which saw two students from different institutions collaborating with a separate institutional host (in this case the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library).  I was impressed with the eagerness of the delegates, many of whom were in attendance at 9am on the Saturday morning.  Tim Galsworthy and Lauren Eglen, the PG co-organisers, did a great job and were ably supported by the BAAS PG Rep, Olivia Wright, and my Eccles Centre colleague, Philip Abraham.  I’d like to minute our thanks to them all.

On 16 December I attended the JAS Editorial Board meeting.  It was a great opportunity for the Editorial Board to meet Alison Stanton, the recently appointed Editorial Manager.  The co-Editors and Associate Editors set out their ongoing plans for the journal which continue to prove innovative and exciting, with particular projects foregrounding BAAS and JAS’s ongoing commitment to improving BIPOC representation within the community and to developing our discussion of pedagogical practise.

Other items to report:

As discussed at the September meeting, I can officially confirm that the US Embassy selected BAAS to administrate the next phase of the Embassy’s Small Grants Program and have awarded us $89,000 for 2019-20 (the award runs until the end of December 2020).  Lydia Plath and Matthew Shaw have agreed to continue to serve as co-Managers of the programme, with Katie Edwards continuing as administrator.  The Embassy has also agreed to extend the previous 2016-2019 grant to allow us to spend the remaining $6,800 alongside the current round.

As you may recall, BAAS was approached by the organisers of the next English: Shared Futures conference, taking place in Manchester, 26-28 June 2020.  The organisers invited us to contribute fully-formed panels to the programme. We have had two accepted: ‘Definitions Towards Solidarity: BAME Americanists in the UK and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies’, organised by Christine Okoth (building on the Targeted Research Panel she convened for BAAS 2019), and ‘Doing American Studies Now: African American Text, Media and Theory’, organised by Nicole King.  I have also been invited to speak on a panel looking at the work of learned societies.

Administrative proposals:

As you will know, I have proposed trying a new social media strategy for the 2020 calendar year which will see each Executive Committee member responsible for managing the official BAAS Twitter account for one month.  I hope this will improve the regularity of our engagement via Twitter and will help us give a better flavour of the variety of disciplinary areas covered by BAAS, thus producing a more representative and engaging public face.

Finally, I’d like to propose a new pattern for committee meetings between now and the April 2021 conference.  In order to reduce the travel burden on committee members aiming to get to 4 in-person meetings a year, and the associated time, environmental and financial costs, I’d like to suggest that we aim for 2 in-person meetings of the full Executive committee, at the annual conference in April and then again in the autumn, with the summer and winter meetings taking place via video conference (with a site visit to the next year’s conference venue, still taking place for the Conferences sub-com chair and the Chair as well as other interested parties, with the remote Exec meeting to follow shortly after).  I propose that we take out a subscription to a professional service, Zoom, which will cost us £143.88 for the year (roughly the cost of one or two train tickets).  This will also enable sub-committees to meet remotely, hopefully more regularly than just quarterly.  In order to improve efficiency and increase productivity, I suggest that the sub-coms have brief update meetings in-between the full committee meetings (so roughly once every 6 weeks).  There is no expectation that these will be lengthy meetings.  We will review the arrangements in April 2021 and see if we are happy to continue, or if the formula needs to be adjusted. Could also be used for other BAAS activities e.g. PG peer reading group; can do webinars etc could be used for PG workshops [seek committee discussion and approval]

Notable Achievements of Members

None provided.

Other items to discuss: sending a note round the mailing list when new minutes are added to the website.

Secretary’s Business (Rachel Williams reporting)

We received one nomination for the BAAS Honorary Fellowship – Sue Currell. Executive Committee members unanimously and enthusiastically supported this nomination. Cara contacted Sue to inform her of the award, and Sue was delighted to accept the Fellowship.

RW and Jenny Terry continue discussions to transfer the SAMS registration; this has been held up by UCU strike action.

RW has ordered and received a new batch of BAAS bookmarks from University of Hull central print services – to discuss payment with EH and NW.

Awards Subcommittee: Stephen Mawdsley reporting

Role Handover (August 2019)

A special thanks to Emma Long for providing handover notes and advice during the transition process.

Setup of Awards (September)

We ran competitions in fourteen award categories this year. I am pleased to report that we have maintained our various national and international award partnerships (i.e. GTA awards). A special thanks to Louise Cunningham for assisting with the set-up process and to Ben Offiler for providing me access to the BAAS website for editing purposes. In September, I updated the various awards profiles on the BAAS website and began the promotion process.

Promotion of Awards (October – December)

As agreed at the last meeting, I trialled promoting the BAAS awards though non-print means. I updated last year’s poster templates for digital distribution and set up a series of pre-loaded Tweets on the BAAS Twitter feed. Based on likes/feedback and on the number of applications we received this year, it appears that our trial of digital-only award promotion was successful. A special thanks to all committee members for assisting with the promotion process.

Applications to Awards (December – January 2020)

We had a bumper crop of applications this year. Some highlights include 13 applications to the Book Prize and 40 applications to the PG short-term travel award. I will prepare a more detailed award-specific report for the AGM.

Assessment Panels (January – February)

Overall, I received a very warm reception during the awards panel recruitment process. Most academics accepted the invitation to serve.

To assist with the adjudication process, I created a ‘Guidance Document,’ which was circulated to awards panels. A special thanks to Louise Cunningham and Katie Edwards for processing and distributing the application packages.

Treasurer’s Business (Eilidh Hall (EH) reporting)

Membership Figures

Currently number 626 members in the online system; up by 6 from the last report. There are 657 (as at 01/01/2020) total active members on the Google spreadsheet – below report compiled by Louise Cunningham:

Membership Numbers per category as at 1 January 2020

Active memberships from the BAAS online membership system:-

Please note that I am unable to get a breakdown of concessionary membership types as the membership type field is not complete in all records.

BAAS Membership – 12 (Honorary 10/Free 2) Richard King/Mick Gidley (2009), Michael Heale (2010), Helen Taylor (2011), Susan Castillo (2012), Tony Badger (2013), Iwan Morgan (2014), Ian Bell (2016), Phil Davies (2017) & Judie Newman (2018). Richard Gray given this category for free access to JAS (not a member). Sue Wedlake given free membership by S Currell as BAAS Chair (2015).

Schools membership – 2 (schools’ data from the membership google spreadsheet hasn’t been imported to the online membership system). Previous membership reports show 8 members. Clear & Creative were working on this category, so may need to check why this number has reduced?

Concessionary membership with JAS – 62 (62 active/recurring payments)

Individual membership with JAS – 82 (82 active/recurring payments)

Individual membership – 181 (181 active/recurring payments)

Concessionary membership – 287 (287 active/recurring payments)

Total active memberships = 626 minus 19 joined after 1 Jan 2020 = 607

Active memberships from the BAAS membership google spreadsheet:-

BAAS Membership (Honorary/Free) – 11 (As detailed above, minus Richard Gray who is not on the google sheet as he is not a current member).

Schools membership – 18 (schools data from the membership google spreadsheet hasn’t been imported to the online membership system)

Concessionary membership with JAS – 68 (PG – 54, PR – 7, PU – 7)

Individual membership with JAS – 80

Individual membership – 190

Concessionary membership – 290 (PGN – 259, PRN – 7 PUN – 24)

Total active memberships = 657 as at 01/01/2020

Membership type key
Students (inc. Journal of American Studies) = PG
Students (JAS online) = PGN
Unwaged Members (inc. Journal of American Studies) = PU
Unwaged Members (JAS online) = PUN
Retired Members (inc. Journal of American Studies) = PR
Retired Members (JAS online) = PRN

Account balances (as of 23/01/20)

BAAS Charity Barclays Current Account                     £12,656.40

BAAS Charity Barclays Savings Account                     £169,200.90

BAAS Charity Shawbrook Savings Account                 £TBC CR to confirm

PayPal                                                                         £17,054.31

BAAS Publications Barclays Current Account             £42,640.78

Recent activities

CUP: we received an earlier than usual advance payment in November but won’t get the balance until late spring/early summer – so NW and EH will continue to monitor the Publications account to ensure that we have enough cash reserves to meet outgoing expenses, especially with the appointment of new staff.

Sussex have been invoiced (on 23/01/20) for the return of surplus money from EBAAS conference, total £12,020.00.

Question re: renumeration of expenses for Alison Stanton (JAS) – should be put through payroll in line with payments made to other JAS members (e.g. bonuses to editors)? Short term, we can put through particular expenses as a one-off. Going forward meeting work should be incorporated into salary – people who are on the payroll should not be invoicing Treasurers for additional work, it should be subject to the same PAYE deductions.

Clarification was given to TRPs re: attendance at dinner. We will make sure there are reserved spaces for them but no further funding will be provided – with the understanding that this can come out of TRP funding.

On this – lead members of the TRPs have received the first 2020 payment to allow for early bird registration, etc.

Forthcoming  

EH and NW need to change the name registered on the Shawbrook savings account. It is still under CR’s name.

The Treasurer workload continues to be heavy and EH and NW have ongoing work commitments that make managing BAAS work difficult at times. We need to start thinking about a transition toward a handover when our tenure ends in 2021. We cannot assume that someone like Cara will be present to help out with handover and we need to work on the assumption that time scales are long for things like bank mandate changes, etc.

CR proposed talking to the accountants re: professional support from them (with a fee).

CR proposed looking at courting a Treasurer-Elect for 2020-21 to co-opt on to the board. This way, the T-E could do work shadowing and to begin change over processes in good time.  EH agreed this was a good suggestion. Exec members are asked to think of people who might be interested.

In the meantime, we appreciate everyone’s patience.

Publications Subcommittee: Mike Collins reporting

Publications has had three main areas of ongoing business since the last meeting of the Exec at the BAAS PG conference in the British Library in December:

• The JAS Main Board Meeting
• USSO discussions over remuneration of editorial staff
• The British Online Archives Fellowship/Internship

JAS:

Holly O’Neill prepared the annual JAS Publishing report in November with the following Overview points:

Journal circulation remains strong though the number of institutional subscribers has gone down from 9,304 in 2018 to 6,010 in 2019.

Articles were downloaded 74,944 times through Cambridge Core in 2018

“Historians and the Civil Rights Movement” by Adam Clough was the most downloaded article in 2019. [Mike – this arguably reflects teaching in 20th century US history as the most dominant sub-discipline of BAAS/JAS] “The Erotic Charisma of Alexander Hamilton” by Caroline Hamilton and “The Historiography of the Black Panther Party” by Joe Street are also regularly downloaded.

Online usage is up 38.5%

It is the plan to extend Cambridge Core Share [a system that creates URL links for social media sharing of JAS content to be available on all journal content soon.

Open Access continues to be a main discussion topic at CUP but there are no specific plans relating to JAS at this stage – though CUP are discussing ways to permit personal retention of copyright for authors

The journal continues to publish on time and the expansion to an extra issue is proceeding well

Editorial Board meeting 16/12/19

Sinead and Nick proposed two primary points of discussion – above and beyond regular editorial business, and confirmation of new Board Member Sarah Gleeson-White of Sydney.

Replacement of the other vacant position in History is not yet filled but will be in the new year hopefully

Eithne Quinn has proposed the expansion of the Board in light of the new issue per year. S and N are trying to identify possible areas of specialism needed and how the constitution of a new, expanded board would function.

Peer Review Code of Conduct: Developing documents that guide readers in “writing supportive and constructive readers reports” to be published on the journal webpage. Lots of positive noise here from the board and useful suggestions on the wording.

Feedback Emails to Peer Reviewers: to inform peer reviewers of the eventual outcome of articles they have reviewed. Currently this is not done and is a source of some frustration to the Editorial Board who invest lots of time in peer review. Again, the Board agreed and this is moving forward.

Additionally, the possibility of a podcast was floated by Georgiana. Holly O’Neill will explore how the current journal platform could host such a thing. Discussions ongoing

USSO

I have been working hard on developing a way to remunerate USSO after opening this discussion with them last BAAS conference following the handover to me from Joe S. This is ongoing, but has stalled as USSO prepared the handover to its new editors. Part of the issue here is that because of the voluntary nature of the USSO journal and its staffing by people on insecure academic contracts there has been a large devolution of power to around 6 sub-editors over the last 4 years (all of whom the current main editors want to be paid in the event of remuneration being agreed). The USSO editors see their role as as labour-intensive as the JAS editors and want remuneration in line with this. Clearly, this is impossible, although some additional support “in kind” might be workable, including training opportunities with CUP (I can discuss this with Holly O’Neill potentially in due course)

Our counter proposals (Cara, Rachel, Eildih and myself met at BAAS PG to discuss this) involved the possibility of greater expenses and helping them move to seeking funding through advertising and monetisation. The USSO editors rejected this proposal on the grounds that BAAS, in turn, would seek greater oversight of the editorial board and processes as a result of additional support from the Publications Sub-Com and Exec.

The advertisement for jobs on the new editorial team will be live in March and the outgoing editors will interview. We should open this discussion up again with the new editorial team – whoever the may be. My feeling is that if there is to be decasualisation and remuneration for work on the publication that there needs to be a consequent streamlining of USSO’s work model.

BOA Fellowship

This is currently in BOA’s hands as they need to come back to us with a model of what they actually want from the fellow. There has been six months of back and forth on this – I have had 4 or 5 separate meetings with BOA (including Rachel, James and others at times) to establish what the Fellow would do now the BOA model for its publications is not based on individual scholarly input but “big data”. In short, the fellowship will not be running in this cycle. It may run next year, but I suggest that be the last time we pursue this. The cost-benefit calculation is ceasing to work in either of our favours – they have a fellow/intern they are not sure what to do with, and we have are no longer getting the research experience for BAAS members.

I expect to hear back from Kathryn Rose at BOA in the next few weeks, but am not actively pursuing this. Let’s probably just call this an expenses saving for the year!

Development and Education Subcommittee: Lydia Plath reporting

Update on actions from the last meeting:

• Terms of reference for the subcommittee are now on the website.
• Development Fund – no further progress; awaiting outcome of budget discussions from CR and treasurers. We are still hoping to launch this at the conference in April.
• CR will liaise with CP re. the Membership Survey.
• Decolonising American Studies Conference – LP, NW and CO have had initial conversations about hosting this at UCL. Further exploration and discussion with UCL colleagues is ongoing.

Activity since the last meeting

1. Future of the Inclusive Conference: After productive planning conversations with CR and CO, we have contacted all of our sister organisations about the idea, and received a good amount of interest. TW will also come on board as part of the planning group. The next step is to confirm a date (likely early September at the BL) and then to plan the event and advertise. We also need to consider whether external speakers would be useful at the event. Action: LP to arrange another planning meeting with CR, CO, and TW.
2. The collaboration between BAAS and The Brilliant Club has been very productive. Emma Horrex was appointed in a competitive application process to develop a Key Stage Three Programme with the theme “Music with a Message: Understanding America through Song” which was completed in December 2019

PG Representative report: Olivia Wright reporting

PG BAAS Conference at the British Library:

Very successful conference, 14 panels in total and 75-80 people registered. Great response on Twitter too. Big, big thanks to everyone from the exec that came.

As usual we had a USSO sponsored PG keynote from Lucy Mounfield (Nottingham University) which was excellent.

Had a “suggestions box” and got a couple of thoughts: could BAAS run some kind of workshop programme for PGs, and could we bring back the PG and ECR peer reading scheme. Exec’s thoughts on these? Some initial questions to think about:

Workshops – who would run them? Where would we host them? Repeated workshops in different places? Volunteers to run them? What topics would we cover?

Peer reading scheme – speak to HOTCUS about this? Would it be a lot of work for upcoming PG Rep to take on by themselves? Could it be an informal network/mailing list?

Thinking Ahead:

Prepare to advertise for organisers for this year’s PG BAAS conference around February. Are we going to follow a similar format (students from different universities rather than 2 from the same) and if so, how do we decide where it is hosted? Could we collaborate with other groups (e.g. PG HOTCUS/IAAS/EAAS?)

New PG Rep to be elected in April – when do we advertise? Do they have to be first or second year (full time) in order to still be a PG for the 2 years or does this not matter? Will promote it on PG Twitter when the time comes.

Any Other Business.

Proposal to align all BAAS communication and written materials with British Dyslexia Association guideline. See: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide (major one is ‘left align text without justification’).

Proposal to, where possible, buy book tokens/vouchers for independent book stores – e.g. for USSO keynote speaker winner. For convenience and fairness, this would need to be a book store near the residence or workplace of the awardee. This year, we bought Lucy Mounfield a voucher for £100 for Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham. National Book Tokens are a good option as well as they can be used in almost all bookshops.

Date of next meeting (Liverpool BAAS 2020)

British Association for American Studies

Executive Committee Minutes 298

The two hundred and ninety-eighth meeting of the Executive Committee of the British Association for American Studies was held at UCL Institute of the Americas on Friday, September 20^th 2019.

Subcommittees at 11.30; Main Executive Committee meeting at 1.30.

In attendance:

Cara Rodway (Chair)

Lydia Plath (Vice Chair)

Nicole Willson  (Co-Treasurer)

Rachel Williams (Secretary)

Stephen Mawdsley (Awards Sub-Com Chair)

Chris Parkes

Nick Witham (JAS co-editor)

James West (ECR Rep)

Christine Okoth (Equality and Diversity Rep)

Eithne Quinn (Sustainability Rep)

Apologies:

Nick Grant

Olivia Wright

Jenny Woodley

Sinead Moynihan

Mercedes Aguirre

David Hering

Mike Collins

Martin Halliwell

Joe Street

Jo Metcalf

Rachael Alexander

Eilidh Hall

2. Minutes of the Previous Meeting.

The minutes of the meeting at Sheffield Hallam in June 2019 were accepted as a true and accurate record and approved for posting on the website.

3. Matters Arising and Review of Action List.
4. Chair’s Business (Cara Rodway reporting)

Welcome to our committee members attending for the first time.  We are all extremely glad to have you with us and thank you for wanting to get involved in the work of BAAS.  Since our last meeting one committee member has resigned: Dr Ben Offiler has served on the BAAS committee for the last 4.5 years both as ECR rep and as an ordinary member (and was USSO Co-editor before that).  I’m sure you will all join me in thanking Ben for his service and enthusiasm.  The community will continue to benefit from his hard work as he remains an Associate Editor for the Journal of American Studies.

I submitted an application to the US Embassy for BAAS to administrate the next phase of the Embassy’s Small Grants Program, worth $150,000.  The Embassy asked for extra information which I supplied at the end of August.  The Deputy Cultural Attaché, Anna Martz, has indicated to me that we will likely be successful, but this remains contingent on funding and the finalising of paperwork.  I hope to have official confirmation soon.

In the meantime, the final applications for the current BAAS-US Embassy grant have been submitted. Lydia Plath and Matthew Shaw, with excellent administrative help from Katie Edwards, are currently reviewing the committee’s suggestions and applicants will be notified of the outcomes shortly.

I attended the Teaching American Studies conference, organised by Lydia Plath, at Warwick in June.  It was an extremely stimulating event, raising interesting discussions about the benefits and challenges of different pedagogical approaches, especially around assessment.  There was also discussion about supporting junior colleagues. As a step forward in this, our colleagues on the HOTCUS steering committee have given us permission to use the Jobs Excellence Framework they created as a way to help raise awareness about poor conditions in, particularly, precarious roles. The JEF has also been adopted by our colleagues at BGEAH.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that it has helped shaped appointment processes upstream as well as candidate expectations, so I hope that BAAS’ adoption of it will continue to magnify these effects and enact change.

A further productive outcome from the TAS conference was that I was able to connect with Dr Lauren Mottle, Editorial Assistant on JAS.  She is now working for The Brilliant Club, and through her enthusiastic invitation, BAAS will be working with TBC to create a bespoke American Studies resource for delivery in schools in 2020.  A fuller report from D&E will follow.  My thanks to Nick Grant for leading on this.

This forms part of a renewed effort both on BAAS’s part and within our broader community to think about schools outreach and undergraduate recruitment.  Outside the BAAS Exec, Andrew Fearnley continues to lead a group of colleagues particularly focused on UG American Studies recruitment.  Andrew has coordinated a webinar with the Sutton Trust and US-UK Fulbright Commission, speaking to students involved in the Sutton Trust USA programme who may not decide to pursue a full degree in the US but who may appreciate the interdisciplinary, and Study Abroad, opportunities American Studies can provide.  Again, more detailed feedback will come through the report from Development and Education.

BAAS has been approached by the organisers of the next English Shared Futures conference, taking place in Manchester, 26-28 June 2020.  I attended a meeting for subject area Learned Societies on Monday 24 June.  The organisers have invited us to contribute fully-formed panels to the programme.  This would be a wonderful opportunity to highlight the excellent work done by members of the BAAS community, especially as it relates to American literature and connected fields.  Would anyone like to volunteer to coordinate BAAS’s presence at ES:F 2020?  We can discuss different potential models.

Finally, Rachel Williams, Eilidh Hall and I had a productive discussion about BAAS administrative support with Louise Cunningham and Katie Edwards on 31 July.  We reviewed and clarified existing processes and discussed ways to help both admin staff and committee members manage their workloads. Louise and Katie remain committed to BAAS and we as an organisations are extremely fortunate to benefit from their professional expertise as well as their organisational knowledge. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them, once again, on behalf of the Exec Committee for everything that they do.

Notable Achievements of Members

• Christian O’Connell has won the inaugural International History Review Research Award, which offers £1500 to support research activity. The resulting article written on this research will be published in the IHR Journal. The award is supporting his project entitled ‘Bringing Columbus Home: Memories and Legacies of the African American Presence in Italy during WWII’. The paper will examine the ways in which black GIs, particularly the 92^nd ‘Buffalo’ Division have been commemorated and represented in Italy.
• Laura Mills was awarded a BISA (British International Studies Association) Early Career Small Research Grant to conduct research on US military/veteran artwork, particularly in the context of recent, controversial wars (Afghanistan and Iraq).
• Sinead Moynihan has been promoted to Associate Professor in American and Atlantic Literatures at Exeter.
• Anne-Marie Angelo has been promoted to Senior Lecturer in American History at Sussex.
• Christopher Bigsby has been awarded an honorary D.Litt by Bolton University for his contribution to arts and literature. His new book Staging America: Twenty-First Century Dramatists will be out with Macmillan in December.
• Joy Porter has been awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for her project ‘What Would Nixon Do?: The Forgotten Republican Roots of American Environmentalism’. Subsequently Kristopher Ray will be joining Hull for 3 years as a Leverhulme Trust Lecturer in Indigenous America, to replace some of Joy’s teaching.
• Additionally, Joy has asked that the BAAS community welcome two new colleagues joining the Treatied Spaces Research Cluster at Hull: 2019 British Academy Global Professor Gregory Smithers of Virginia Commonwealth University who will be working with the cluster over the next four years on a new project on “Indigenous Environmental History and Applied Traditional Ecological Knowledge”; also Rebecca Slatcher who recently accepted a British Library/AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award entitled “North American Indigenous Languages in the British Library’s Post-1850 Collections”.

5. Secretary’s Business.

The make-up of sub-committees and the standing orders for each sub-committee are listed on the website but have not been updated since 2010; tidying up this part of the website should be a priority once this role has been allocated.

RW is in continuing discussion with Jenny Terry (former Secretary) to arrange transfer of SAM registration to RW (so that Embassy funds can be transferred efficiently to BAAS).

6. Treasurer’s Business.

Nicole Willson (NW) reporting

Membership Figures

Currently number 621 members in the online system; down by 7 from the last report. There are 635 total active members on the Google spreadsheet (please see attached report from Louise Cunningham for further breakdown).

Account balances (as of 18/09/19)

• BAAS Charity Barclays Current Account £10,404.54
• BAAS Charity Barclays Savings Account £130,237.97
• BAAS Charity Shawbrook Savings Account £20,521.94
• PayPal £24,786.04
• BAAS Publications Barclays Current Account £17,353

BAAS/US Embassy Awards

Final payment has been received from Embassy for the 2018/19 round. EH is currently completing the Embassy FFR report for the 2017/18 round.

Recent activities

• The Gift Aid payment has been made from the company to the charity (as per the accountants’ instructions, this had to be made by 30 September); however, since the company account did not have enough reserves to meet ongoing expenses, a loan of £20,000 has been made from the charity to the company. Cara’s budget document will be particularly useful going forward.
• Based on the last accounts, our reserves policy is not being met (it represents 15 months unrestricted expenditure whereas we have an agreed policy of 18 months). Do we wish to change this to 12 months?
• We will not be due any revenues from CUP for the 2019 volume until December at the earliest (but usually not until January), so NW and EH will have to monitor the Publications account to ensure that we have enough cash reserves to meet outgoing expenses, especially with the appointment of new staff. It was assumed that there was a cashflow issue and that we had not received all income payable from the journal, but we actually received this much earlier than usual, and so the payment schedule for the last year wasn’t as staggered as it usually is. It will be imperative to ensure that the next invoice is prepared at the right time so that the accountants can prepare accurate year end accounts.
• Accountants have advised that we split payroll between the charity and Publications – because we have only had two members of administrative staff working for the charity and because money from the company is Gift Aided to the charity anyway, it made sense to have all standing orders going out from one account, and the accountants agreed. CR has suggested that we effectively bill the charity for the relevant employees (perhaps via standing order) but still have pay going out from one account.
  • On a related issue, the accountants have also advised that JAS editorial bonuses be paid via payroll.

Forthcoming  

• EH and NW have both started new roles recently and so this represents a very busy time for them both. They will endeavour to respond to all queries as soon as possible, but forbearance is appreciated.
  • If people have multiple queries, it is easier for NW and EH to action them if they send separate emails (e.g. one for grant payment and one for expenses).
• EH and NW need to change the name registered on the Shawbrook savings account. It is still under CR’s name.
• Because we are a small organisation that nevertheless has a number of expense requests to process, it is likely to be too pricy for us to sign up to an expenses management system, but NW will explore some other options that might simplify the process
• Women in JAS Intern: Since the work associated with this role is for the purposes of training/development, NW and CR wonder if the money should come from the charity rather than Pubs (especially since the charity currently has better reserves) – question of how person should be paid (single honorarium or split payments). NW may need to speak to accountants about this.
• Paypal: We continue to experience issues with PayPal, primarily because there are multiple users (NW, EH and LC) – Karen Heath of HOTCUS has reported similar issues. We may need to speak to PayPal about configuring different user access. Properly configuring the account so that it is more fit for our business needs will be essential to ensuring sustainability and easy handover of Treasurer/administrator work going forward.
  • ACTION: NW and EH to speak to PayPal about access

7. Equality and Diversity (Christine Okoth reporting)

CO reported on progress with the BIPOC network (NB renamed from “BAME” to reflect the greater inclusivity of the phrase). Seed-funding has been allocated to support this work, and Christine will publicise the network through the mailing list. One suggestion is to involve participants in the TRPs from Sussex and Liverpool.

Action: CO to communicate with Tom Wright and David Hering to involve the TRPs in the scheme – CO suggests holding an informal meeting at Liverpool 2020 to pool ideas and get the ball rolling.

TRP participants are engaged in ongoing work; several BAAS members have set up a reading group – to take place at UCL beginning in October.

Emerging from discussions in D&E, the Executive Committee agreed to advertise a BAAS Archival Internship to research “race” in BAAS (and possibly JAS) and in the historical context of HE and UK, to include an output in JAS. Christine will liaise with the JAS co-editors about a possible output resulting from the fellowship. CO will write a job ad in communication with various parties. She stresses that we need to locate Sabina Peck’s outputs from the Women in BAAS project so we can publicise them on the website and elsewhere – and use them as a guide for the new fellowship.

8. Sustainability (Eithne Quinn reporting)

There are several research clusters within the Americanist community working on issues of environmentalism, conservation, and sustainability – for instance, Joy Porter’s Treatied Spaces cluster at Hull, Northumbria’s new hires in environmental history. EQ convenes a special subject on Climate Change Communication at Manchester, and the Embassy Grants funded a project on eco-feminism in the last round of funding. This all demonstrates that there is a demand for, and an audience for academic research into these issues from an American Studies perspective. More and more universities are pushing environmental issues and solutions.

EQ stresses that BAAS needs to find practical solutions – and, moreover, to back up communication stressing BAAS’ commitment to sustainability with actions, regardless of the challenges these actions may pose, and the inconvenience to individuals they may cause.

Possible avenues to explore:

Catering – Eithne Quinn suggested that we think about the environmental impact of the conference catering, especially as it is something done at scale.  The committee agreed to trial vegetarian-only lunches, with delegates free to eat meat and fish at breakfast and dinner.  With this in mind, we were also wondering if it would be possible to have some variation, so that the lunches aren’t just sandwiches.  Or maybe sandwiches one day, and other options the next.  We hope that the universities we work with are trying to improve the sustainability of their operations, so that this will not be a problem, but rather might be something they are keen to work with us on.  Further, we’d like to see as little single use plastic in the catering as possible (no single use water bottles, disposable hot drinks cups etc).  Obviously, some of these things will be beyond our control, but if you can ask the questions and push the Events teams, hopefully we’ll be able to make a bit of a difference to the carbon foot print of the conference.

AGM papers – EQ suggested that having the AGM papers and accounts printed for distribution at the AGM is wasteful.  We agreed that we could save resources and make the meeting more accessible if the materials were distributed digitally prior to the AGM, perhaps by putting them into a file sharing service and sharing a dedicated link to all conference attendees and BAAS members.

Action: The Officers are to implement this for the AGM 2020.

Videoconferencing – EQ opened a discussion about video conferencing and the annual conference. The sub-com discussed the implications of incorporating remote participation and agreed that, whilst it would reduce the need for travel, it would have impacts which would need careful consideration (could reduced international attendance impact upon the quality of the discussion and on the make-up of our scholarly community; would it unfairly impact scholars working outside the UK who may have less access to a vibrant research community; would it impact across different professional levels equally; what could be the short and long term implications of reduced in-person contact for individual researchers and the community?).  We agreed that these issues should be discussed fully in a dedicated forum such as the ‘Future of the Conference’ event being planned.

Action: CR and LP to continue planning the Future of the Conference conference

Statement on BAAS’s response to the climate crisis – EQ suggested that BAAS produce a public, visible statement about its approach to the climate crisis and the actions it is taking.

Action: EQ to draft a statement for publication after the conference in April 2020 when we will have some concrete steps to report to BAAS members.

Other avenues – JWe suggests BAAS might sponsor an award for work explicitly devoted to the environmental humanities. EQ also suggests we need to reflect critically on our financial practices – in particular, Barclays (savings account) have a poor record on climate change and sustainability, and PayPal also has a questionable record in this department. While switching accounts may be too logistically tricky, we could consider writing a letter to Barclays expression our concern and dissatisfaction.

9. Publications Subcommittee: Report from Chair. – CR reporting back from combined meeting of Pubs, Conferences, and Awards (no official report from Mike).

Journal of American Studies Report (Nick Witham reporting)

1. Appointment of JAS Editorial Manager: we have appointed Alison Stanton to this position, starting 1 October 2019. It was a small but strong field (we interviewed two other eminently appointable candidates from a pool of ten applicants), and Alison has experience doing exactly this job for another, non-competing, journal, so we are excited to start working with her.

Action: Nicole and Nick to liaise about getting Alison on the BAAS Publications payroll

2. Appointment of “Women in JAS” Intern: we have appointed Maryam Jameela to this position, starting 1 October or soon after. The pool of applicants was 16, from which we interviewed 4 appointable candidates. Maryam is a scholar of literary and cultural manifestations of Islamophobia and their impact on Muslim women in the American and British diasporas. She has recently submitted a PhD in English at the University of Sheffield, and comes to the role with a strong background in gender studies and both quantitative and qualitative data analysis.

Action: Nick to ask Maryam to invoice monthly, to Nicole, for hours worked.  These will be paid for by BAAS Charity.

3. New appointments to the Editorial Board. Four board members’ terms are up for renewal at the end of 2019, and all of them have agreed to serve a further 3-year term. They are: Eithne Quinn (Manchester), Joyce Chaplin (Harvard), Rebecca Schreiber (New Mexico) and Robert Levine (Maryland). Sadly, Stephen Tuck (Oxford) and Mark Whalan (Oregon) are completing their second terms and need to be replaced. Both have made impressive and consistent contributions to the journal, and we would like our thanks, and that of BAAS, to be noted in the minutes of the executive committee meeting. We are starting the process of replacing Stephen and Mark, with a view to the newly appointed candidates starting their terms on 1 January 2020.

Action: Mike Collins to work with Nick and Sinead on the appointment process for the new JAS Board members.

British Online Archives Internship

CR reported that a meeting had taken place with BOA over the summer, which she, Mike Collins and Rachel Williams had attended.  We are working towards a data and digitisation focus for the next internship.  We are awaiting further details from BOA at this stage.

Action: Mike to report on progress of BOA discussions.

USSO

No report.  Sub-com discussed the issue of potential remuneration for the USSO Editors and agreed that further discussion should take place once Mike has investigated monetising the site. Further, the Exec needs to codify other benefits available to the USSO Editors, so that this knowledge can be handed on: e.g. free conference registration for Editors etc.

Action: Mike to complete report on pay and benefits for USSO Editors.

CUP payments (Nicole reporting)

Recent work has been undertaken to clarify the payment schedule with CUP.  BAAS can expect to receive the advance in the autumn, followed by the balance in late spring/early summer.

Nicole has organised loaning some cash from BAAS Charity to BAAS Publications Ltd to ensure we have cash available to meet our payroll commitments for the rest of the calendar year.

10. Development and Education Subcommittee: Report from Chair.

Matters Arising

CR Reported that BAAS will endorse the JEF by including a link to it in the mailing list with job advertisements.

Action: Link to JEF to be included in future mailing lists

LP welcomed CO as the BAAS rep for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion as a member of this subcommittee; she also thanked BO for his contribution to the subcommittee.

Sub-committee terms of reference

The sub-committee amended and agreed terms of reference. The current Term(s) of Reference are:

The Development subcommittee shall encourage the development of American Studies nationally and ensure that the interests of the subject and its teachers are considered and protected in the making of national educational policy.

Updated and approved Terms of Reference (Sept 2019):

The purpose of this subcommittee is to encourage and support the development of American Studies nationally through a variety of activities. The subcommittee shall:

• support the development of American Studies postgraduates and Early Career Academics;
• support the career development of American Studies members at all career stages, including academics, independent scholars and those working in related professions;
• support the development and diversity of research networks, affiliate organisations, and other scholarly organisations in the field of American Studies;
• support the development of pedagogical practice and student engagement in American Studies Higher Education;
• support the development of American Studies in schools and further education (via the Schools Working Group, which will report to this subcommittee);
• Administer the BAAS Development Fund.

Action: LP to arrange posting of these terms of reference on website.

The sub-com agreed to formalise a Schools Working Group that will report to this committee. There was some discussion of the tensions between WP and Recruitment and what BAAS’s role should be. It was agreed that the SWG should meet to agree its terms of reference.

Action: RW and NG to arrange first meeting and confirm Terms of Reference and Membership. To report back at the next meeting. Any other members wishing to join the SWG to contact RW.

Future of the Inclusive Conference – RW reported no longer taking this on due to SWG, but agreed this should go ahead, including discussions of sustainability.

Action: LP to liaise with RW and CR about leadership of this project.

Proposal for Establishment of Development Fund

See amended draft attached. Agreed at both subcommittee and main exec. Noted that members of Conferences and Awards subcommittees to be included on the panel. Noted that sustainability initiatives could also be supported by this fund.

Action: LP to follow up with CR, RW and treasurers regarding financial elements and next steps.

PG/ECR

JWe reported success of panel at Teaching American Studies conference. JAS roundtable on TF positions forthcoming. Some discussion of peer reading scheme and mentoring but no conclusions on how useful this is. Suggested possibility of a panel on alt-ac career routes at a future PG conference. Some discussion of possibilities (as with ECR development), but not enough clarity on usefulness of such a scheme. HOTCUS scheme noted. Suggested to add more detailed questions on mentoring to next Memberships Survey. LP to discuss with CP.

Reported that successful Teaching American Studies Conference held at Warwick in July 2019. Dissemination of outcomes will be via US Studies Online, Comparative American Studies and a JAS Exchange.

Noted that there was a proposal for Conference on “Decolonising American Studies”: to be hosted at UCL:IA & potential pre-conference panel at BAAS2020. Not discussed in detail.

11. Conferences Subcommittee: Report from Chair. CR reporting in absence of TW

Conferences:

Liverpool 2020 – no report

Hull 2021 (Jo Metcalf and Rachel Williams reporting)

• A reminder of dates – 8-10 April 2021.
• We have booked the Kingsley Suite for the duration of the conference to act as a registration point, venue for publishers’ stands, and refreshment area.
• We have booked Middleton Hall with full A/V support for three keynote sessions (one on Thursday late afternoon, one on Friday morning, one on Friday afternoon) plus the AGM (late Friday afternoon after the final keynote).
• We plan to hold the wine reception on Thursday evening in the University Art Collection in the Brynmor Jones Library, which is a large and attractive space. We would like to liaise with Atom Brewery to provide locally brewed ale – however, this will incur a corkage fee from the university. We would appreciate advice from David Hering and Tom Wright about the payment for this reception as we understand it has caused difficulty in the past. We need to liaise with DH about hosting the reception at Liverpool.

Action: DH and TW to discuss with Hull organisers

• The Beyond Events team have provided us with a detailed quote including refreshments.
• We have booked the Guildhall in the city centre for the conference dinner on Friday evening, and the attached reception room for the drinks reception. The Guildhall is within walking distance of city centre restaurants and hotels so those not attending the dinner will have plenty of options. We have secured the Guildhall at 2019 prices – but prices for catering may fluctuate. There is a natural stage in the Guildhall for presentation of Awards.
• We are planning to meet with the merchandise partners in October but would welcome the Exec’s thoughts on the necessity of excessive merchandise – both for cost reasons and for sustainability.

Discussion: The sub com agreed that one iconic thing, rather than lots of stuff is best.  We agreed that everyone has enough small canvas tote bags (but if you like the idea of a bag, you could maybe do a proper, shopping size bag).  We agreed that the most useful merchandise from recent BAAS conferences was the reusable coffee cup given out at CCCU in 2017.  We liked that they marked all the delegates out, helped reduce waste at the conference, and have had lives afterwards. Lydia Plath (who was then the co-organiser) said that if she were to do it again, though, she would get ones with better lids (and also would order more tea and coffee, as the keep cups are much bigger than the little catering cups, so they ran out of hot water at every break).  We discussed that there are lots of nice bamboo options out there.  Another thing to consider is that the nicer keep cups can be a bit more expensive than your budget might allow.  We wondered what about offering a subsidy through the conference fee, with delegates paying a bit extra for their cup if they want one (so they might cost delegates an extra £5-10).  In terms of small things, we all agreed that a pen is the most useful and tends to have a life after.  For a very environmentally conscious offer, we could do pencils.

• We are yet to book panel rooms as we need to wait for the timetable to be released; however, we do not anticipate any problems with availability as the conference occurs in the Easter break. There will be no charge for booking these rooms. In an unexpected turn of events, there may be accommodation available on campus (we were previously told this would not be an option) – however, we won’t know this until later next year.
• We would like to invite members of the Exec (especially the Conferences Sub-Com and Officers) to visit Hull in January to tour the facilities. We would also like to solicit advice and suggestions from the JAS editors and the Eccles Centre team with regard to picking keynote speakers.

Action: RW to organise January mini Exec meeting at Hull.

12. Awards Subcommittee (Stephen Mawdsley reporting)

• Transition and hand-off from Emma Long has been successful
• Our regular annual rewards have been updated and posted to the web
  • Book Awards, travel awards, essay awards
• Promotion of Awards
  • Social media / thanks to Ben Offiler for help with the website
  • Discussed whether posters will be printed and shipped this month [DECISION: DIGITAL ONLY]
  • Personalized correspondence to increase awareness: [DECISION: AGREED]

Action: Stephen to speak to Louise about Katie chasing-up e-mail addresses for a digital distribution list

1. GTAs

1. 1. Not Running

1. UWY: not running this year as we have a student in role

1. 1. Running

1. UMISS: proposing to make this a GA rather than a GTA (can only provide 1 year) [DECISION: Sub-com agreed there was no change in the quality of the award on offer – in fact the variety of work offered to a GA might be of more interest to some students]
2. UNewHamp: happy to continue as GTA this year

1. 1. Had a drop in applications over the years; considering new promotional strategies [DECISION: SOCIAL MEDIA on Twitter / Ben currently / direct e-mail / H-Net] [CONTACT BrANCH to facilitate]; Louise and Katie as custodians of this information
2. Barringer-Teacher’s Fellowship
   1. No applications last year; perhaps need to draw up a list of schools that teach American history

Action: Stephen to talk to Rachel re: Schools’ Working Group – how to coordinate publicity; also think about other marketing route: social media etc

Action: CR to share with Stephen a draft of a schools-focused flyer promoting the Student Essay and Teacher’s awards.

1. Book Award
   1. Due to the number of application last year (15) proposals put forward to changing the judging criteria:

1. Leave arrangement for now [DECISION: AGREED]
2. Pushing assessment forward in the year until conference

• Pushing forward by 1 year

1. Consider changing the start-end dates of publication year (June-June)
2. Other options [NEW]
   1. Consider creating 2 awards per year [TO CONSIDER]
   2. Long-listing and a short-listing process [TO CONSIDER]

Action: Stephen to prepare a report for the committee meeting in summer 2020 to help clarify if a change in process is needed.

1. Awards Section of the Website
   1. Echo sentiment to work towards clean-up
   2. Tweak to the structure to enable easier way to find awards
   3. Update list of previous winners (2019)

Action: Stephen to liaise with next webmaster over Awards remedial work needed on the website; also to think about longer term improvements.

13. EAAS (Jenny Woodley reporting)

JWo reminds colleagues that the deadline for abstracts for “20/20 Vision” in Warsaw is November 30^th. The conference will take place May 1-3; the themes are Citizenship, Space, and Renewal.

14. Any Other Business.

Website and digital platforms

Responsibility for the website has moved to Publications subcommittee: CP has researched and drafted the job description for a Digital Platforms Manager (this is a title which will be recognisable to people working in the tech sector). This role would involve updating and operating the website, responding to technical queries and difficulties. The exec discussed different models and payscales for remuneration – TBC.

Noted that eduroam is available for free; will be the responsibility of the DPM to arrange – this will enable BAAS to provide email addresses and eduroam access to members without institutional affiliation in line with BAAS’ commitment to combatting casualisation and empowering ECAs.

Action: CP to circulate job description to LP, CR, RW, treasurers, and Mike Collins (Chair of Publications) for review

Memberships Survey

Agreed to run another survey in line with 2020 conference. CP to discuss publicising the survey in advance of the 2020 conference with DH, CP to contact BO for full access to 2017 membership survey data. Noted that questions should be designed with full exec’s input.

The main priority is to act more quickly and decisively on the data – especially because we have a legal obligation to track and measure change over time (to assess whether the ban on all-male conference panels has had a positive impact).

CP to draft survey for consultation and circulate to LP, RW and CR.

14. Date of next meeting.

January 23^rd 2020 at University of Hull (mini-Exec; officers and sub-com chairs only)

British Association for American Studies

Committee Minutes 297

The two hundred and ninety-seventh meeting of the Executive Committee of the British Association for American Studies was held at Sheffield Hallam University on Friday, June 7^th 2019.

Subcommittees at 11.00 (Development and Education at 10.30); Main Executive meeting at 1.00.

1. In attendance

Cara Rodway (Chair)

Lydia Plath (Vice Chair)

Eilidh Hall and Nicole Willson (Co-Treasurers)

Rachel Williams (Secretary)

Mike Collins (Publications Sub-Committee Chair)

Laura MacDonald (Conferences Sub-Committee Chair)

Jenny Woodley (EAAS Rep)

James West (ECR Rep)

Ben Offiler

2. Apologies

Nick Grant

Nick Witham

Sinéad Moynihan

Tom Wright

Martin Halliwell

David Hering

Christine Okoth

Stephen Mawdsley

Ruth Lawlor

Rachael Alexander

Olivia Wright

3. Minutes of the Previous Meeting.

The minutes of the meeting at Sussex in April 2019 were accepted as a true and accurate record and approved for posting on the website.

4. Matters Arising and Review of Action List

CR offered thanks to BO for hosting the meeting at Sheffield Hallam.

4. Chair’s Business (Cara Rodway reporting)

Welcome to our new elected committee members: Lydia Plath, Tom Wright and James West. Laura MacDonald has resigned from the committee, effective after this meeting, as she will be taking up a new role in the US at the end of August.  I want to express our thanks to her for her excellent work on the committee, most recently as Chair of the Conferences Sub-Com: her Targeted Research Panels initiative is an excellent legacy.

Much of my recent work has been focused on the make-up of the committee and sub-com assignments.  These will be formally dealt with under Secretary’s business.  I don’t want to be responsible for plot spoilers but suffice to say I am very grateful to everyone who has volunteered to serve in whichever capacity.

No further update on the next phase of the BAAS-US Embassy grants so far. Lydia Plath and Matthew Shaw, with excellent administrative help from Katie Edwards, are currently working through the final tranche from this cycle.  Thanks to Brian Ward for continuing to serve as a judge on the committee for these.

Along with committee members Rachel Williams, Nick Grant and Nick Witham I attended the American Studies UG recruitment workshop organised by Andrew Fearnley at Manchester University on Monday 3 June.  This saw American Studies Program Directors and undergraduate admissions tutors from England and Wales discuss how to improve student recruitment and working with schools. More detailed feedback will come through the report from Development and Education.  There were many good ideas and I think we can certainly find ways to support new initiatives.

BAAS has been approached by the organisers of the next English Shared Futures conference, taking place in Manchester, 26-28 June 2020.  I will attend a meeting for subject area Learned Societies on Monday 24 June and will report back on how we can support this significant and exciting undertaking.

Following up on action points from the last minutes: the discussion about BAAS administrative support with Louise and Katie has not yet taken place but will do soon.

Notable Achievements of Members

• In April 2019 the Spanish Association for American Studies presented Paul Williams with the Javier Coy Biennial Research Award for Best Journal Article for his article “Jules Feiffer’s Tantrum at the End of Narcissism’s Decade,” published in Studies in the Novel3 (Fall 2018).
• Kirsten MacLeod’s monograph, American Little Magazines of the fin-de-siècle: Art, Protest, and Cultural Transformation (University of Toronto Press, 2018) was the recipient of the Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize for 2017-2018, awarded at the 2019 American Literature Association Annual Conference in Boston. She has also been promoted to Reader in Modernist Print Culture at Newcastle University, effective August 1, 2019.
• Simon Newman has been awarded the Solmsen Fellowship at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, and will be spending the 2019-20 academic year in residence at UW. His Leverhulme Trust-funded project ‘Runaway Slaves in Britain: bondage, freedom and race in the eighteenth century’ was awarded two prizes. First, the Best Community or Public Engagement Initiative Award, University of Glasgow Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement Awards. 2019, and second, the Research Project of the Year Prize, the Herald Higher Education Awards 2019.
• Nicole Willson will be starting a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (36 months) at the Institute for Black Atlantic Research at UCLan in September. The title of the research project is “Fanm Rebèl: Recovering the Histories of Haiti’s Women Revolutionaries”.
• Laura MacDonald will be taking up a new Assistant Professorship at the Residential College in Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University from August 2019.

5. Secretary’s Business.

Confirmation of Vice-Chair and 2019-20 Co-options

Lydia Plath, newly elected to the Executive Committee, has agreed to serve as Vice Chair, succeeding Kate Dossett. This is in addition to her role as Chair of the Development and Education Sub-Committee.

The BAAS Constitution mandates that the Executive Committee be made up of 14 to 16 elected members; Laura MacDonald stepping down means this number falls to 13. Per the Constitution, any vacancies that arise between AGMs may be filled from unelected candidates standing in prior elections for ordinary members. Therefore Stephen Mawdsley, the runner-up candidate in the April 2019 elections, is duly elected to complete Laura’s term which expires in April 2021 (and will be eligible to stand for re-election for a full three-year term subsequently should he choose to do so). Stephen has agreed to serve as Chair of the Awards Sub-Committee.

The following co-options are proposed (for a period of one year):

• Christine Okoth (Equality and Diversity remit – to sit on Development and Education)
• Eithne Quinn (Sustainability remit – to sit on Conferences)
• Joe Street (newly appointed co-editor of the Edinburgh UP BAAS Paperbacks series – to sit on Publications)

All appointments and co-options were approved unanimously by the Executive Committee.

New Trustees elected in April have been added to the information on the Charity Commission website; RW to liaise with NW and EH to update this information with Barclays.

5. Treasurer’s Business (Nicole Willson (NW) and Eilidh AB Hall (EH) reporting)

Membership Figures

Currently number 628 members in the online system (inc. 281 concessionary memberships); this is up by 10 from last year when there were 618 members (with the same number of concessionary memberships). Louise Cunningham is continuing to manage the member lists and to transfer information from the old Google spreadsheets over to the online system.

Account balances (as of 06/06/19)

• BAAS Charity Barclays Current Account £4,201.74
• BAAS Charity Barclays Savings Account £111,701.75
• BAAS Charity Shawbrook Savings Account £20,521.94
• PayPal £22,942.12
• BAAS Publications Barclays Current Account £68,991.91

Presentation of the 2018 accounts

As reported at the AGM in Brighton, the accounts show a steadily improving position due mainly to income receivable from BAAS Publications Ltd. BAAS Publications will Gift Aid £55,348 to BAAS Charity before 30 September 2019. The reserves for the year are £155,831. The accountants advise that this represents 15 months of unrestricted expenditure (the charity has a policy of retaining 18 months of reserves). We may need to revise our reserves policy (Moffatts have advised, however, that we should not have reserves of less than 12 months).

Recent activities

The mandate changes on all accounts have now been completed and EH and NW now have full access. Since receiving access to the Publications account earlier this year, the tax bill loan made by the charity to cover reserves in the Publications account has now been repaid.

The accountants have advised that to ensure a steady cashflow and circumvent any possible recurrence of such a situation, royalties from CUP should be sought in a timely fashion. This continues to be an ongoing issue for NW and EH as communications with CUP are often slow, which has had a bearing on the generation of forecasts and payment of invoices. NW and EH will need to discuss with other officers a way of managing this more effectively moving forward.

Savings account (in Feb 2017, £20k of our reserves was put into a one-year fixed rate savings account with Shawbrook Bank, through the Charities Aid Foundation, with a return of 1.30% gross), this has now matured and been rolled over for another year; the interest earned in 2018-19 was £263.36. We may wish to consider transferring more money into this savings account in the coming year.

Forthcoming  

• Although the admin load associated with the Treasurer role is currently split across the two Co-Treasurers, NW and EH would like to consult the other officers about streamlining what continues to be a very heavy administrative burden with the possibility of taking on additional administrative support. This was a suggestion put forward by the former treasurer. We put forward a suggestion to incorporate a new expenses system for exec members to streamline the process for all of us. One possible system for this is PLEO or Concur. EH and NW will investigate the most cost-effective system.
• EH and NW need to change the name registered on the Shawbrook savings account. It is still under CR’s name.
• Now that we have over £20K in the PayPal account, NW and EH wonder if funds be dispersed into our savings account.
  • CR advises that we need only keep a float of £5K to in the PayPal account, so remaining funds should be transferred to savings account.
• TRPs – £2,500 is given to each panel, but if there is an underspend we have no protocol in place to ask for/get that money back. And indeed 1 TRP from BAAS Sussex has overspent. NW and EH wonder what the protocol should be in this instance? Given that the budget is made very clear for each year of the TRP, EH and NW do not believe that a case can be made for the reimbursement of overspends.
  • LR agrees that we pay the maximum £2,500 and no more for each year of the TRP cycle.
  • 75% up front, 25% afterwards as with administration protocol for other awards.
• NW and EH have recently updated PayPal login details. Louise Cunningham has been made aware and has access for membership work.
• NW and EH to notify accountants about change of officers on Pubs for Companies House (CR, RW, NW and EH).

7. Equality and Diversity

Christine Okoth is duly coopted. LP reminds all Sub-Com chairs that Equality and Diversity is a standing item on every committee’s agenda – items need not necessarily be passed to Development and Education as a matter of course.

8. Publications Subcommittee (Mike Collins reporting)

Handover from Joe Street

• The handover of the Chairing of the Sub-Com was completed at the BAAS Meeting in Sussex. Most files in the hands of the Secretary. Joe Street gave an extensive briefing document to Mike Collins and is on hand to help with any loose ends. Thanks to JS for his service to the Executive Committee.

JAS

• The majority of JAS business related to issuing the contracts for the Editors – which were overdue. This was completed in May.
• JAS is planning to expand to 4 issues. Fully costed plan. Includes 10% pay increase to editors and appointment of new Editorial Manager. Chair to work with Cara and the Editors to develop appointment documents and contracts – proposed deadline mid-July, interviews late July, start date October 1^st.

BAAS Paperbacks

• Joe Street has been selected as the new joint editor of the BAAS paperbacks series and will continue to report to this sub-com.
• No formal report on paperbacks
• Chair in contact with Joe Street about Paperbacks future. New ideas for shorter form books – with a public-facing angle – are under discussion. Nothing to report at this stage. Ongoing.

BOA

• Chair, Rachel Williams, James West and Cara Rodway to meet with BOA at BL to discuss new plans for the BAAS-BOA Fellowship.
• BOA has moved to a new model of resource development. Called “data led” this means that any Fellow will have different requirements for establishing their resource. The Fellowship will include more training in using the BOA system and be less directly related to the “academic” needs of the fellow – more concerned with training in parallel academic fields such as library science.

N.B Since Sub-Com the BL meeting has taken place and there is now a schedule for the development of the Fellowship, which should launch in the Autumn for work of the fellow to commence in the early Spring – with a report at BAAS Liverpool. This has gone a bit quiet over the summer break but is in hand with Kathryn Rose at BOA.

USSO

• Prior to June I spoke with the editors of USSO (Rachael Alexander and Ruth Lawlor) to discuss plans to ensure they would be remunerated for their work on the journal, which is extensive, but currently voluntary.
• They were requested to put together a report on the journal’s business and to send it through to the committee with any requests. The requests were discussed extensively by the Sub-Com and included
• A Stipendiary rate of pay through BAAS. This is a complex issue as there are currently 4 sub-editors plus the main editors. This to be discussed at main Exec
• USSO to be included in the BAAS Publications Sub-Com with required expenses.
• USSO to be able to attend the BAAS PG conference – with expenses.
• Small budget for promotion. Primarily for Conference pack handouts at relevant events
• An extensive design of site ready for the handover to new editorial team at the end of Rachael and Ruth’s term of service. R and R have been put in contact with Clear and Creative and will be developing a plan for the new site ready for the Winter Exec.
• The sub-com generally agreed to all these requests in principle, but there was the issue of how it would be paid for – to be discussed in Main Exec. Chair proposed advertising on site, which will be discussed with the USSO editors as part of the web redesign. LM noted that BAAS already have a model for this in the form of the paid advertiser tables in the conference. We would need to develop a list of suitable advertisers to approach. This is ongoing. EH and NW noted that a full business case might required for approval.
• B Since meeting, Chair has spoken with the editors and discussed these issues. It was decided that a full business case would need to be written to justify any cost increases. This is underway and should be ready by later Autumn for circulation.

9. Development and Education Subcommittee (Lydia Plath reporting)

LP thanked Kate Dossett for her hard work as the former Chair of this subcommittee. She welcomed Christine Okoth to the committee in her role for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. LP noted that this sub-committee covers a great deal of BAAS business, and the goal is to streamline and prioritise.

At this meeting we discussed the following:

• BAAS rep for WASN to be Jenny Woodley.
• Approved the JAS proposal for a Women in JAS research assistant for 100 hours of research time at the proposed rate.
• Regarding the website, we noted that there needs to be both remedial work and then agreed to advertise a part-time admin role for maintenance of the website. BO and CP to action.
• Support for other organisations and networks: we agreed a small seed funding of £500 for a BAME network (CO). LP to develop a proposal for a “development fund” for other organisations and networks.
• We discussed the report from the event organised by Andrew Fearnley. Some discussion of the role that BAAS can play in these activities. Agreed that this needs a larger piece of work and discussion. LP to discuss with RW and NG.
• Discussion of whether BAAS should formally indorse HOTCUS Jobs Excellence Framework (JEF). CR to discuss with Kendrick Oliver (HOTCUS Chair).

10. Conferences Subcommittee

Equality and Diversity

The Targeted Research Panel initiative brought people out of the woodwork, and the Sussex organisers felt this work was worth showcasing and funding over a keynote. The 15 submissions exceeded expectations, and funding two new panels every year may be a useful precedent. Future proposals should be required to include explicit budgeting for both years of programming. Going forward the panel organisers should be given the conference support reimbursement form to claim funding, and should be reminded that any overspend will not be reimbursed. Nicole King liaised with Ben Offiler regarding the uploading of a TRP panel video to the BAAS website (available here: https://www.baas.ac.uk/project/targeted-research-panels-baas-annual-conference/)

BAAS 2019

Sussex organisers were asked to consider circulating a feedback form though this was raised after the conference so may not have been feasible. Going forward conference organisers should be reminded to collect data at both the point of registration and as a followup to the conference, to support BAAS efforts to foster equality and diversity, and capture date to document progress.

Organisers noted that the payment for hosting a reception at EBAAS 2018 was scrutinised, and that a new approach to launching the next conference may be needed. This funding may be allocated from a School’s research fund, for example, and a wine reception may not be a priority over funding research, given shifting cultural norms and increasingly limited budgets. In consultation with the subcom chair and current conference organiser, organisers of future conferences should establish early on whether the wine reception launch will be a manageable cost for their institution.

Two plenary sessions worked well at the Sussex conference, however the organisers committed to too many parallel sessions, leaving some sessions poorly attended. They encourage future organisers to include a disclaimer at the point of abstract submission, indicating the expectation that successful presenters commit to attending and paying registration fees.

BAAS 2020

All three keynotes are now confirmed: Heather Ann Thompson (JAS), Hanif Abdurraqib (UoL), Fionnghuala Sweeney (Eccles). The organisers are in talks with the Merseyside Maritime Museum to host the dinner on 17th April (Fri night). Hardship funding of up to £300 for UK-based presenters and up to £750 will be advertised in the CFP. Several BAAS members have requested BAME network event, whether breakfast, or another scheduling option. Jenny Woodley agreed to connect Christine Okoth (Warwick) with Tom Wright and David Hering to explore the possibilities.

BAAS Postgraduate Conference

Olivia Wright reported in writing that Tim Galsworthy (Sussex) and Lauren Eglen (Nottingham) were the successful applicants to co-organise the PG conference and are working with Olivia and the Eccles Centre on the event, “Communicating the United States,” to be held at British Library, 6-7 December. Members of the BAAS executive are encouraged to support the event as much as possible, and be visible to conference participant (name badges, introductions, etc).

Small Conference Grants

A grant recipient requested BAAS bookmarks for inclusion in conference packs (funded events are asked to do this but haven’t always follow up to request material). Unless a stock of bookmarks is found, new bookmarks may need to be ordered via Sue Currell’s printing contact in Brighton.

11. Awards Subcommittee

Nothing to report; CR will arrange a handover meeting between Emma Long, outgoing Chair, and Stephen Mawdsley, incoming Chair.

12. EAAS: Report from Representative (Jenny Woodley reporting)

The CFP for Warsaw 2020 is in the final stages of approval and will be circulated in due course.

13. Any Other Business.

Comparative American Studies have just appointed new co-editors (both members of the BAAS community): Tom Rhys-Smith and Rachel McClellan. Congratulations and best wishes to Tom and Rachel on their appointment.

NW and EH raise the question: ‘Is there any way that BAAS can be classified as an ‘institution’ for eduroam access? Those without institutional affiliation (e.g. EH) can’t get the basic eduroam internet access and this is an obstacle for meetings.

14. Date of next meeting.

Friday, December 6^th at the British Library, London. Timings TBC but likely morning with a view to attending the Postgraduate conference which begins that afternoon (6^th-7^th); Executive Committee members are encouraged to attend and to respond enthusiastically to requests for participation from the co-organisers.

NB since the meeting was held it was decided to hold an earlier meeting to prevent a lengthy gap; hence the next meeting will be held at UCL Institute of the Americas on Friday, September 20^th.

British Association for American Studies

Executive Committee Meeting 296

The two hundred and ninety-sixth meeting of the Executive Committee of the British Association for American Studies was held at the University of Sussex, Brighton on Thursday 25 April 2019. Subcommittees at 9.00; main Executive meeting at 10.00.

1. In attendance – Laura MacDonald, Jenny Woodley, Olivia Wright, Ben Offiler, David Hering, Rachel Williams, Nicole Willson, Cara Rodway, Chris Parkes, Brian Ward, Joe Street, Michael Collins, Nick Witham, Kate Dossett

Althea Legal-Miller

Sinead Moynihan

Eilidh Hall

Emma Long

Nick Grant

3. Minutes of the Previous Meeting.

The minutes of the meeting in Liverpool in January 2019 were accepted as a true and accurate record and approved for posting on the website.

4. Matters Arising and Review of Action List.

BW offered congratulations and best wishes to Nick Grant and his partner Heather on the birth of their first child, daughter Alma.

JS finalized details of the presenters for Friday’s Awards ceremony (to be presented by chairs of panels in Emma Long’s absence).

5. Chair’s Business (Brian Ward reporting)

Chair’s Activities, meetings and correspondence January 26, 2019 to April 25, 2019

BW offered thanks to all Exec committee members for their work and support. In particular, once more, to Rachel Williams, as acting Secretary in the busy run up to the Conference, and to Ben Offiler, who is running the BAAS 2019 elections and picked up a lot of the work on the weekly e-Newsletter as Nick Grant steps aside to prepare for parenthood.

BW congratulated Nick on the arrival of baby Alma.

Similarly, BW thanked Eilidh Hall and Nicole Willson for the special effort necessary to get our accounts and financial reports in order for the AGM and the Charity Commission. Once more they were supported by Cara Rodway. In recognition of CR’s work in facilitating completion of these mandatory financial requirements, the BAAS officers agreed to offer CR an additional honorarium.

BW reported on a meeting at the US Embassy in London with Kim Dubois and Anna Martz re the BAAS-US Embassy grants. The Embassy is generally delighted with how these are being administered, in particular praising the rigour and full reporting of the selection process overseen by Lydia Plath and Matthew Shaw, with excellent administrative help from Katie Edwards.

In the current, 2019 cycle of the BAAS-Embassy Awards, the first round produced 26 applications, of which 11 were funded to the tune of £38k. This leaves £29.5k to disburse in the second round, with applications due on May 1.

As for the future, after granting two extensions to the original one-year period during which BAAS has administered the award, the Embassy expects to put administration of the 2020 grants out for tender again. As in previous discussions of these awards, BW recommended that, assuming the broad remit remains the same (ie: to promote interest in and understanding of America in the UK) BAAS should apply again for stewardship of these most valuable awards which will, by the end of 2019, have provided c.£216.7k of support to the UK American Studies community broadly understood.

Andrew Fearnley at Manchester University has confirmed Monday June 3 as date for a meeting of American Studies Program Directors (or equivalents) to focus primarily on issues of student recruitment and working with schools. Andrew has worked with BW and others in BAAS on this event and we should promote it as widely as possible at the Sussex conference and via BAAS social media platforms.

Congress to Campus/APG Annual Support Proposal

BW noted that every year the American Politics Group applies to BAAS’s Small Conference Grant scheme for £300 to support its long-running Congress to Campus programme. In particular, the money has been used to defray costs of the capstone event at the British Library and make it more accessible.

The £300 is fairly nominal and represents extraordinarily good value for money as in this is an outward-facing scheme that engages the American Studies scholarly community alongside university students, schools, teachers, and politicians.

BAAS’s contribution, though modest, is always fully acknowledged – even in years when the APG failed to actually apply to us! Moreover, it has strategic value in that, in recent decades, the APG and the ‘political scientists/historians’ cohort among UK-based Americanists have not always felt as at home, or perhaps as valued, in BAAS as they once did.

I would, therefore, like the Exec to consider ring-fencing an annual award (perhaps of £1000) to support the Congress to Campus programme for the next two years (funds for November 2019 have already been applied for under the SCG scheme, but we can make an exceptional award), renewable thereafter, pending satisfactory reports on how the money has been used and that it continues to represent value for money to BAAS.

In making the award, we might not only ask that it be used primarily to lower costs of attendance/widen participation at the British Library event, but also encourage the APG to think about ways to expand further the reach of the programme. Although the tight timetable for the week-long visit may make this tricky, exploring more creative use of social media, webinars, etc. could help.

The APG would be asked to submit a provisional budget to the Treasurers and Chair of the Conferences Sub-committee ahead of the C-to-C events it wishes us to support, but it would not be part of the annual round of Small Conference Grant applications.

• The Exec decided to postpone this decision to the June meeting to discuss more broadly how we might support “affiliate organizations” (such as HOTCUS, BrANCH, SHAW, BrANCA, APG) through ring-fenced money – possibly through a “tender” process granting two years’ worth of funding. The main priority is that there needs to be a robust system of review so that no organization/group receives the money in perpetuity. In particular, it is vital that any organisations singled out for such a scheme demonstrate a clear and determined effort to support inclusivity, equality, and accessibility (and have a good track record in these areas).

Saving/Spending BAAS Money Wisely

Aside from the APG/C-to-C issue, BW also suggested that the Exec might wish to think about raising the upper limit for the Small Conference Grants generally (possibly to £500?), in line with more recent costs, assuming sufficient funds are available.

BW flagged that from 2020, the American Studies community may no longer have c.£80-100k of US Embassy funds to call upon each year.

While it is unlikely that all US funding for American Studies-related activities will disappear, BAAS should start to think about how much of its funds it would need to ring-fence to support core recurring activities (annual conference, PGR conference, Awards, etc.)

Notable Achievements of Members

• Steven Powell (Liverpool) ed, The Big Somewhere: Essays on James Ellroy’s Noir World (Bloomsbury: 2008), has been nominated for the HRF Keating Award for Best Critical/Biographical work

• Alan Rice (UCLAN/co-director of the Institute for Black Atlantic Research), in February 2019 secured an EU Horizon 2020 Marie Curie Skoldowska Intra-European Fellowship grant just shy of 213k Euros, which will employ a post-doc, Astrid Haas, to work on “Black Inter-American Mobilities and Autobiographies in the Age of Revolutions.”

Also, IBAR’s Stuart Hall Fellowship student Jade Montserrat (working on a PhD on Black Atlantic and the North) won a Transport for London award as part of the Art on the Underground programme, designing 3 original works which appeared on posters throughout the network.

Signing off

In his final Executive meeting as BAAS Chair, BW thanked all those who have served on the Exec, whether elected or co-opted, and all those from the broader American Studies community who have helped him and the Association in their work over the past 3 years.

6. Secretary’s Business.

RW to address:

• Contact details of new Trustees for the Charity Commission and Barclays.
• Possible meeting with Louise Cunningham re: ongoing membership queries.
• With incoming Chair and Co-Treasurers – sub-committee makeup once the new iteration of the Exec is sworn in.

7. Treasurer’s Business (Nicole Willson reporting on behalf of herself and Eilidh Hall)

Treasurers’ Communications

This has been an unusually protracted handover period, as NW and EH did not formally take up their appointment until September 2018. NW and EH thank the executive for their patience, and also Cara Rodway for continuing to consult on matters of importance, especially in the preparation of the annual accounts and trustees report.

Membership Figures

Currently number 628 members in the online system (inc. 281 concessionary memberships); this is up by 10 from last year when there were 618 members (with the same number of concessionary memberships). Louise Cunningham is continuing to manage the member lists and to transfer information from the old Google spreadsheets over to the online system.

Account balances (as of 24/04/2018)

• BAAS Charity Barclays Current Account £8,902.64
• BAAS Charity Barclays Savings Account £103,720
• BAAS Charity Shawbrook Savings Account £20,521.94
• PayPal £21,620.78
• BAAS Publications Barclays Current Account £22,470

Presentation of the 2018 accounts

The accounts show a steadily improving position due mainly to income receivable from BAAS Publications Ltd. BAAS Publications will Gift Aid £55,348 to BAAS Charity before 30 September 2019. The reserves for the year are £155,831. The accountants advise that this represents 15 months of expenditure (the charity has a policy of retaining 18 months of reserves). The accountants have asked us to confirm what steps we will take to ensure the reserve is being met. CR and BW stated that this figure seems high and does not entirely reflect the operational business of BAAS and its unrestricted funds. This will be queried with the accountants.

Activities since last meeting

The mandate changes on all accounts have now been completed and EH and NW now have full access (EH still needs to request access to Pubs accounts and has been unable to do this while in the US). Since receiving access to the Publications account earlier this year, the tax bill loan made by the charity to cover reserves in the Publications account has now been repaid.

The accountants have advised that to ensure a steady cashflow and circumvent any possible recurrence of such a situation, royalties from CUP should be sought in a timely fashion. This continues to be an ongoing issue for NW and EH as communications with CUP are often slow, which has had a bearing on the generation of forecasts and payment of invoices. NW and EH will need to discuss with other officers a way of managing this more effectively moving forward.

Savings account (in Feb 2017, £20k of our reserves was put into a one-year fixed rate savings account with Shawbrook Bank, through the Charities Aid Foundation, with a return of 1.30% gross), this has now matured and been rolled over for another year; the interest earned in 2018-19 was £263.36. We may wish to consider transferring more money into this savings account in the coming year.

Forthcoming 

Although the admin load associated with the Treasurer role is currently split across the two Co-Treasurers, NW and EH would like to consult the other officers about streamlining what continues to be a very heavy administrative burden with the possibility of taking on additional administrative support. This was a suggestion put forward by the former treasurer.

EH and NW anticipate that there will be lots of expenses to process in the wake of the conference, exec and AGM, and so ask that the executive continues to be patient while they work through these payments.

8. Equality and Diversity

Nothing to report

9. Publications Subcommittee: Report from Chair (Joe Street reporting)

Journal of American Studies

Editors’ report attached: key issue: contracts, new editorial manager.

We discussed the issues of contracts; Nicole Willson agreed that they would be issued soon.

Nick Witham presented the JAS report. He mentioned that roughly 38 articles have been accepted by JAS but have not yet appeared in journal form (they are online only at the moment); the increase to five issues should enable clearing this backlog and allow the editors greater flexibility for curating each edition of the journal. We agreed that the subcommittee would support the request for an editorial manager and the increase to the editors’ salary. We also welcomed the increase to five issues from January 2020 and recommended all these proposals to the BAAS Executive.

This expansion would also justify the expansion of the editorial team by one member of staff given the added workload burdens.

Currently the team is made up of two Co-Editors and two Associate Editors – each of those pairs has an editorial assistant; NW and SM propose appointment of a further (more senior) administrative managerial post – Editorial Manager – to share these editorial duties (such as liaising between CUP and the BAAS Treasurers). This could be a professional freelance publishing person – rather than an academic necessarily – to provide continuity and expertise as editorial teams change. CUP have job adverts/templates that could be adapted to suit this post.

Three motions were put to the Executive Committee:

• That the number of issues per year be expanded from 4 to 5
• That the salary for the Editors and Assistant Editors be increased by 10%
• That an Editorial Manager be appointed

All three motions were carried unanimously.

The JAS Co-Editors are also keen to collect data on the history of women publishing in JAS with the aim of creating an online special issue highlighting these contributions. NW and SM propose appointing a research assistant to collect qualitative and quantitative data. KD suggests this could be modeled on the archival internship.

NW will communicate with the archivist at the Cadbury Library to consider how this will be rolled out and will report back at the June Exec. CP and MC to work with Nick on this across D&E and Publications and to report back in June.

Edinburgh University Press

The editorial positions are in flux. Emily West has been forced to resign, so BAAS and EUP have actively been recruiting a replacement to complete her term; conducting interviews during the conference. I wonder whether this might allow us an opportunity to ‘stagger’ the appointments in future, so we don’t have a situation where both editors are replaced at the same time. Would like to hear subcom’s thoughts before proposing to EUP.

JS agreed to write to Michelle Houston of EUP mentioning this as a possible plan.

USSO

Report attached: key issue: Website revamp.

We agreed that Mike Collins would gather information from the current editors about the amount of work needed to update the website and on the amount of labour they currently donate to BAAS for their work on USSO with a view to drawing up formal contracts and approving a suitable rate of pay.

British Records Related to America on Microfilm: British Online Archives

Relations seem to have cooled since the conclusion of the last BOA fellowship. BOA felt that it was just too expensive to continue, and are clearly desirous of BAAS taking up the costs. Mike and Rachel Williams will be meeting with Kathryn Rose of BOA shortly to discuss a way forward. My position is that, if BAAS commits to a greater share of the upfront funding then it deserves a greater share of the royalties.

MCollins will follow this up, with Rachel Williams and Kathryn Rose

10. Development and Education Subcommittee: Report from Chair (Kate Dossett reporting)

Minutes of the Previous Meeting confirmed

Kate thanked everyone past and present who has sat on the D&E committee- and volunteered to take on some of the many demanding roles: Katie McGettigan; Nick Grant, and Ben Offiler as web officers; Rachel Williams and Ben Offiler as ECR reps and Rachel Williams and Nick Grant on the Schools Working Group. Also co-opted members Nicole King and Althea Legal-Miller. We have done important equalities work- especially around gender but BAAS as a whole, and the constitution of the committee in particular is predominantly white and the exec needs to think about to broaden the appeal of serving on the exec.

Equalities Report

(ALM) nothing to report

Schools Working Group

RW and NG have developed a competitive Schools Grant Programme. The Schools programme has a budget of up to £2000 to be awarded to applicants putting on a schools event through a competitive call for papers. There are two grants available of up to £1000 each that are designed to support initiatives that would bring together academics working in UK Higher Education and secondary school teachers interested in American Studies Topics. All BAAS members are eligible to apply. Deadline 10 May. Details on the website.  Very many thanks to Nick and Rachel for this.

Jenny Woodley offered to help review the applications which would make for 3 panellists.

BAAS conferences could also be a good space for face-to-face engagement with schools. The Schools working group will explore this with the Conference Sub-Committee and conference organizers at Liverpool 2020 and Hull 2021.This might include inviting school children onto campus for example to hear the visiting speaker.

Andrew Fearnley at the University of Manchester is organizing a one day symposium on American Studies programmes at Manchester on 3 June.

Tom Alcock- HOTCUS is holding an exam board event.

BAAS Conference policy- item for AGM

Background to the conference cfp:

BAAS Chair received two complaints from members of the public that the BAAS CFP was in contravention of the 2010 Equalities Act and suggested further legal action if we did not change it.

There were diverging views within the executive committee about whether to continue the ban on all male panels. Following some rigorous debate and via e mail among the executive committee, Nick Grant and Kate Dossett sought legal advice from Bindmans, a legal firm specialising in equalities law. Our solicitor advised that our policy was likely lawful but made a number of recommendations:

• Expansion of the rationale in the CFP
• Systematic reviewing data on panel proposals and delegates to its conferences over the last 3-5 years a) and b).

The sub-committee agreed to put the new conference cfp to the AGM for discussion.

Harassment Policy Working Group (KD and RW)

EBAAS reports of inappropriate behaviour on panels-this was reported to a number of us at the conference and ultimately went to Brian as Chair of BAAS-he issued a statement on the BAAS website.

BAAS has ring-fenced funds for the Future of the Conference at the Eccles Centre at the BL. Rachel and Nick will develop it.

Website Report (BO) 

Ben has taken over mailing list. Chris will share this role. BAAS still needs to engage someone to do a set piece of work to tidy up the website. Nick was in conversation with Michelle Green about this. Ben will follow up with Michelle and if she is not available BAAS will advertise for someone to fulfil the role.

Related to this was a discussion about job advertisements and HOTCUS’s newly implemented jobs excellence framework. The committee discussed the pros and cons and will return to this in future.

Membership Survey Report (CP- pre-circulated paper)  

Thanks to Ben and Chris for their work- in Ben’s case on the original members survey and data report and for Chris who has drafted a blog responding to it.

We had a discussion about how to do more with the report and concluded that BAAS needs to regularly survey its membership and we suggested another survey in 2020 ahead of Liverpool and perhaps with the Future of the Conference in mind. With the experience of having held a membership survey this time we would like to have a series of events/publications/dissemination plans in place ahead of time, so we can make the most of the survey. This might include roundtables that are published through BAAS and associated publications as well as perhaps the Times Higher and U.S- chronicle. A session analysing, sharing and interpreting the data at a BAAS conference was also suggested.

Peer reading scheme (RW) –

Feedback was broadly positive. Those who used it found it really helpful. One colleague suggested having a more senior colleague would also be useful. There is likely support for introducing a mentoring scheme as well.

Women in American Studies Network and BAAS (KD).

The Core Group met in December- consists of a representative from each of the American studies organizations in the U.K.

WASN has a lunch network session at each BAAS Conference and it chooses one of the American studies organizations annual meetings to sponsor each year-this time it is the APG.

BAAS agreed to host information about the network and to cover costs of travel to the core meetings for those representatives whose organizations have no budget

ECR Rep Report (RW )

Rachel Williams, the outgoing ECR representative was thanked for all her hard work

11. Conference Subcommittee: Report from Chair (Laura MacDonald reporting)

The 63nd BAAS Annual Conference was a joint event with EAAS and was held at King’s College London, University College London, and the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, 4-7 April 2018. There were 129 panels, 455 papers, 515 delegates, and a surplus was returned to BAAS. The Annual Conference was, as always, a place of lively debate and stimulating new research, manifested in three engaging and well-attended keynote speeches from Bettye Collier-Thomas (Temple University), Jo Gill (University of Exeter), and M. Giulia Fabi (University of Ferrara). Reflecting BAAS’ commitment to Equality and Diversity, the conference included a joint lunch session of the BAAS Women’s Network with members of the EAAS Women’s Network.  Sabina Peck (BAAS Cadbury Library intern) spoke about the history of women in BAAS and the results of her research were also on display in an exhibit throughout the conference.

America’s Urgent and Great Problems, the Annual BAAS Postgraduate Conference, was held at Northumbria University (3 November 2018). This one day event was attended by 60 delegates and combined panels, roundtables, plenaries, and training workshops. Following the tradition of having a postgraduate or early career researcher keynote speaker, this year’s conference began with a speech from Dr. E. James West (Northumbria University).

To support BAAS work in building a more inclusive and diverse scholarly community, the Conferences Committee worked with the organisers of the 2019 conference at Sussex to pilot a Targeted Research Panels initiative, which generated 15 proposals. Funding has been awarded to the convenors of two panels, who will each organise two successive annual conference panels that will support, promote, and feature the production of research by and about people of colour, LGBTQ+, and disability communities. The 2019-20 recipients will present at Sussex and Liverpool.

Over the course of 2018 various events were awarded Small Conference Support Grants by the Conferences Subcommittee. These included:

• The Cartographic Imagination: Art, Literature and Mapping in the United States, 1945-1980 (Paris School of Arts and Culture, University of Kent, 18-19 May 2018). The Small Conference Support Grant was used to support postgraduate presenters at the event.
• Did Liberalism Fail in the United States after 1945? Identity and Conflict from Truman to Trump (University of Glasgow, 1 June 2018). Funding from BAAS was used to support a prize for an ECR or PhD to deliver a plenary at the end of the symposium, and this initiative was enthusiastically received by attendees with regards to the initiative.
• “Women and Slavery: Agency and Constraint in the Slaveholding South” (Manchester Metropolitan University, 19 January 2019). The Small Conference Grant made it possible to fully fund the participation of five postgraduate attendees.

Small Conference Support Grants have been made to forthcoming conferences:

• “Marx and Marxism in the United States: A One-Day Symposium” (University of Nottingham, 11 May 2019)
• “Arts Patronage in Modern America” (University of Oxford, 26-28 June 2019)
• “Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) Annual Conference” (University of Reading, 5 July 2019)

David Hering (Liverpool 2020 coordinator) will approach the TRPs to discuss what they will do in the second year of their funding.

Olivia Wright reports on the PG conference; she received 7 applications to organize the forthcoming conference at the British Library, and will liaise with Fran Fuentes to finalise the decision.

The provisional date for the PG conference is 6/7 December.

In conjunction with D&E, the Conferences Sub-Com will also continue to consider how conference spaces can be used to facilitate schools liaison work (e.g. inviting school students onto campus).

12. Awards Subcommittee: Report from Chair (Emma Long – report submitted in advance)

Breakdown of Award Submissions 2019

Thank you to everyone who served on the awards panels this year. The awards process is successful only because of your hard work, so many thanks.

Once again, a big thank you to our awards partners, particularly the University of Wyoming for their continued, enthusiastic support of the GTA programme, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello for their support of the Barringer Fellowship (especially for agreeing to continue the award next year despite our lack of candidates this year).

Numbers of applications for awards were relatively stable this year with two exceptions:

• First, we had no applications for the Barringer-Teacher’s Fellowship. I wonder whether Awards and the new teaching working group might work together to try and get the message out to teachers about this award.  With fewer opportunities for US history and politics teaching in schools, this opportunity should be attracting more applicants.
• On a more positive note, we had 15 submissions for the book award this year, and half the submissions were from women. So to everyone who helped get the word out about this and encouraged people to submit their books, again a big thank you.  This raises some questions about how we might handle the book award in the future, however – see discussion points below.

The Eccles Centre for American Studies took their awards in-house this year and so we only managed our own awards, plus the two Miller Institute Awards at UEA.  BAAS made 19 awards in 9 categories (plus two awards via the Miller Institute).

The awards will be announced at the conference dinner on Friday 26 April.  Many thanks to Kate Dossett, Jenny Woodley, and Joe Street for taking on awarding duties in my absence.

Equality and Diversity Statistics for Awards:

* denotes the Chair

^ denotes successful applicant (where known)

Issues for discussion:

Although it is fantastic that we had so many submissions for the book prize this year, it has caused some difficulties.  As the committee indicated, reading fifteen books in a three-month period is a big ask, and is a much shorter turnaround time than most other book awards.  The question then is can we change the arrangement to make things more manageable for those who sit on this panel in the future.  There are a number of possible options (and the Subcomm and Exec may have additional suggestions):

• Leave the arrangement as it is for now and see if the number of submissions remains at a high level next year. This avoids making what could be quite significant changes to the awards schedule but does risk putting a heavy burden on the panel next year if submissions remain high.
• Consider announcing the book award later in the year with the recipient invited to the following conference to receive his/her award. For example, in 2020, we would consider submissions published in 2019, have a deadline for submission in January 2020, announce the winner in late 2020, then invite the recipient to the 2021 conference.  This provides more time for the panel but does delay the announcement/receipt of the award.
• Keep the announcement/award at the conference itself but for the year after the books were published. In effect, this has a similar impact to suggestion (b) above.  So for the next round we would consider books published in 2019 but not announce until the conference in 2021.  This again creates more time and keeps the announcement of winners alongside the conference schedule but does create a bigger gap between the publication of the book and the announcement of the award.
• Consider changing the start/end dates of the publication year for which we consider the awards. So instead of it being a calendar year we would consider books published between, for example, June 2018 and June 2019 for announcement at the 2020 conference.  The downside to this is that it’s not so neat in terms of the start/end dates for each award year which may make things more complicated to manage.

In light of discussions about diversity and representation in the awards processes, it has been suggested that we consider inviting members of the targeted research panels to the conference dinner in the future.  The TRPs were not announced or run as awards per se but they could be included under that banner if the Exec. is inclined to do so.

On a personal note, many thanks to everyone on the Exec., past and current, for the last three years.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time working for BAAS and will miss the discussions.  But I look forward to seeing everyone at future events.

13. EAAS: Report from Representative (Jenny Woodley reporting)

EJAS – agreement with ProQuest. Reminder/ encouragement for BAAS members to submit.

EAAS travel awards – BAAS members have had recent success. Continue encouraging members to apply!

Women’s network held a really successful and well-attended symposium on feminism and techno science. I’ll let members know about next event. They are starting an ejournal which will be biennial to publish symposium papers.

Next EAAS conference: Warsaw 1 May – 3 May 2020

Forthcoming: EAAS Conference in Madrid 2022 – early April, potentially the week beginning 4 April

14. Any Other Business.

The committee extended their thanks to departing members: Brian, Kate, Joe, Laura and Emma for their hard work and dedication during their terms.

Members of the committee are encouraged to attend the AGM which will be held at 4.30 on Friday in the Jubilee Auditorium – and to bring as many people as possible to ensure we are quorate!

Sub-com chairs to send RW written reports at earliest convenience.

15. Date of next meeting.

TBC (now fixed at June 7^th at Sheffield Hallam University).

British Association for American Studies

Minutes of the 295^th Executive Committee Meeting

Held at Liverpool University on Friday, January 25^th 2019, following a tour of rooms and facilities at the conference host for 2020. Convened at 13:00 as a “mini-Exec” with reports from chairs of sub-committees submitted in writing in advance.

1. In attendance

Brian Ward (Chair)

Kate Dossett (Vice-Chair)

Nicole Willson (Co-Treasurer)

Laura MacDonald (Conferences)

Rachel Williams (ECR Rep)

Liverpool 2020 Team: David Hering, Stephen Kenny, Sandeep Parmar, Yannis Tzioumakis

2. Apologies:

Laura Sandy (Liverpool)

3. Minutes of the previous meeting:

The minutes were amended to reflect that Emma Long and Nick Grant were both present at Northumbria, and were then accepted as a true and accurate record; they will now be posted online.

4. Matters arising:

Sylvia Ellis is stepping aside as Secretary in advance of the standard end of the term. BW extends his sincere thanks to Sylvia for her stellar work as Secretary and her long service to BAAS in a number of roles and the Exec wish her well.

Rachel Williams is duly proposed, seconded, and ratified as Acting Secretary in the interim (BW having received no objections to her appointment). The post will be up for election at the April AGM. Ben Offiler is duly appointed Elections Officer to oversee organisation and administration of elections in the run up to and during Sussex 2019.

5. Chair’s Business (Brian Ward reporting)

BW offered thanks to all Exec committee members for their work and support. In particular, he thanked Mike Collins for attending some meetings in London on Open Access organised by the Arts and Humanities Alliance, Rachel Williams, for stepping into the role of acting Secretary following Sylvia Ellis’s decision to step down early, and Ben Offiler, who agreed to take on administration of the BAAS 2019 elections.

BW encouraged colleagues to think of and, as appropriate, sound-out likely candidates for the Executive posts that will open up in April, especially Chair, Secretary and ECR representative. Nominations will be called for in March to allow for online voting.

BW noted that, following complaints raised in Autumn 2018 by two non-members of the Association regarding the CFP for the BAAS2019 Conference, BAAS commissioned Bindmans law firm to provide advice on the legality of its CFP policy (since the 2017 Annual Conference BAAS has prohibited proposals for all-male panels in an effort to address the historic under-representation of women in academic conferences). BW thanked Kate Dossett and Nick Grant, in particular, for taking the lead on this.

The specific legal advice, and recommendations for how to clarify the goals and demonstrate the value of our policy, along with suggestions for disseminating Bindman’s counsel to the membership, will be discussed as part of the business of the Development and Education Sub-committee. However, the headline is that Bindmans believed our policy to be a proportionate response to the issue of female underrepresentation and very unlikely to be found illegal.

BW reported on additional communications with the US Embassy and Lydia Plath and Matthew Shaw around administration of the 2018-19 Embassy-BAAS Small Grants. The plan is to have two rounds of applications, for review in January and May 2019. BW will review former (there were 28 bids to the January round), but not the latter as he will no longer be Chair.

Andrew Fearnley at Manchester University has been in touch with BW, offering to organise and host a meeting of American Studies Program Directors (or equivalents) that will focus primarily on issues of student recruitment and working with schools.  BW recommended that this is something BAAS should support as part of its own school liaison/outreach efforts and will put Andrew in touch with Kate and the Development and Education Sub-Committee.

BW wrote formally on behalf of BAAS to:

1. The University of Hull to voice concern about the threats to Modern Languages programmes and staff at Hull;
2. The University of Keele to voice concern about the decision to end the American Studies BA Programme and express support for Americanist colleagues and the David Bruce Centre. I received a full response from Shane O’Neill, PVC for Planning and Advancement at Keele, offering assurances that Americanist staff are valued, American modules will continue to run and that the David Bruce Centre will continue to be a hub for important interdisciplinary research under the umbrella of a new Keele Institute for Social Inclusion;
3. Mr C. G. Dilworth (Pitlochry), a BAAS Member since the early 1960s who contacted Nicole Willson as co-Treasurer of the Association, who wishes to make a small bequest to BAAS in his will. BW wrote to thank him in anticipation of his generosity and for his long-standing commitment to the Association.

BW commended Liverpool organizers for good early work on preparations for BAAS2020 and thanked them for hosting the January site visit and BAAS Mini-Executive.

Notable Achievements of Members

• Exeter University PGR Jessica Mehta has been awarded an artists-in-residency fellowship by the National Parks Art Foundation at Gettysburg National Military Park and a Helm Fellowship at the Lilly Library to access the archives of Sylvia Plath.

6. Secretary’s Business (Rachel Williams reporting)

Thanks to SE for her useful handover notes to RW. RW will now take over the Secretary’s email account and will become the named contact with the CCO.

NG and LC will liaise with Clear and Creative to address continuing issues with the website and membership. Membership issues were previously with the Secretary but this was decoupled.

BW proposes meeting with LC, Katie Edwards at Keele, NW, EH, and RW as part of a wider discussion about streamlining and rethinking BAAS administrative roles and their various remits.

7. Treasurers’ Business(Nicole Willson reporting)

Bank accounts (as at 23 January 2019)

BAAS Current Account       £10,362

BAAS Savings Account   £97,194

PayPal                             £16,935

BAAS Publications Ltd       £47,425

CAF Savings Account       £20,258.58

TOTAL                           £192,174

Membership Figures 

In March 2018, total active memberships stood at 618 (EH & NW will report back on latest figures in due course).

Treasurer role

Cara Rodway has been exceptionally helpful during what has been a challenging and unexpectedly protracted handover and EH & NW have awarded her an honorarium to thank her for her continued support. EH & NW anticipate that this arrangement will continue until the end of the reporting period.

Although the mandate had changed on the charity accounts at the time of the last executive meeting on 02.11.18 EH & NW are still waiting to be added to the mandate on the publications account, and have had to lean on CR for support in setting up and transferring payments. This has led to a delay in JAS and charity employees receiving their January pay, but standing orders have now been set up to go out on 1^st of each month. NW and EH apologise sincerely for this delay and for any disruption that it may have caused to colleagues.

Money was lent from the charity account to the pubs account to cover a VAT bill that needed to be paid in November while we were awaiting the advance from CUP. This has now been received and our pubs account is looking a bit healthier, so the loan will need to be repaid to BAAS charity.

BAAS/US Embassy Awards programme 2018-19 

LP and MS will be administering this round of awards with the assistance of KE.

As of 23/01/19 the first payment from the embassy has not yet been received so EH and NW suggest that this needs to be followed up with the embassy (Koen Van Eynde?) as a matter of urgency. BW seconded the need to follow this up.

EL has sent a projection of upcoming expenses for the BAAS awards and NW and EH are very grateful for the comprehensive summary.

JAS Recruitment Query – FAO SM/NW

NW found the following guidance on the lra.org (Labour Relations Agency) website in respect to SM’s recruitment query at the last executive meeting:

Q: We are recruiting an administrative assistant but may have another vacancy in 3 months; can we create a reserve list from this recruitment campaign?

A: Employers will often choose to use reserve lists for posts where they have more than one suitable candidate for a vacancy and they can be a useful and cost effective method in recruitment activities. It is important that if using reserve lists this is carried out in line with any recruitment and selection policies and procedures within your organisation. In addition candidates should be informed at an early stage that reserve lists may be kept so that they are making an informed decision in applying and this could potentially increase the number of applicants you have. Candidates who are deemed suitable and who are to be kept on a reserve list should be informed that they are, perhaps what position they hold on the reserve list and also how long the reserve list will last for. It is also important to put a time limit on the reserve list.  Further guidance can be obtained from the Equality Commission on 028 90 890 890, website, www.equalityni.org.

Forthcoming Issues 

EH is on research leave in Texas on a Fulbright Fellowship until the end of April and NW continues to manage a very heavy workload across her respective posts at UKC and the UoE. EH extends her thanks to NW for taking on the burden of treasury business while she (Eilidh) settles in Texas. NW will also be away on UoE business in D.C. from 1-10 February, so there may be a delay in processing treasury business during this period.

Given the potential challenges that the election of two new officers in the coming months might bring, EH and NW would appreciate any support in assisting with this transition, especially given their own inexperience in managing executive business. It would be helpful to have a discussion with officers (both standing and acting) about how we can further streamline BAAS administration. EH and NW will consult with CR about how she thinks the treasurer role might be more robustly supported by admin colleagues.

EH & NW still do not have access to the PayPal account, despite EH making several enquiries about this. NW and CR to meet in February to discuss outstanding issues such as this. Update: access now seems to be granted.

NG to approach Michelle Green (NTU) who has previously undertaken administrative work, especially on the website – with the possibility of resuming this role and assisting LC. If MG is amenable, NW will make sure she is added to the payroll once more.

8. Equality and Diversity

Nothing to report

9. Conferences (Laura MacDonald reporting)

Liverpool 2020

LM extends her thanks to the Liverpool 2020 team for their organisation and hard work.

The CFP for 2020 should be ready for circulation by June 2019 at the latest (to include confirmed keynotes). Ideally it would be ready for promotion at Sussex but confirming keynotes and finalising possible changes to the wording of BAAS policy regarding all-male panel proposals (see below) may prevent this.

DH and team will liaise with CUP (including JS as head of Publications) and the Eccles Centre (including Phil Hatfield and CR) to draw up a mutually agreeable roster of potential keynote speakers and to explore availability and expenses. LM stresses the need to ensure a diverse profile of speakers and range of topics. Typically the JAS-sponsored speaker is based in the US, and the other two in UK/Europe, but this is not set in stone.

Potential themes for the CFP – the Liverpool team are keen to reflect the history of the city, and are therefore exploring ideas around slavery, transatlantic migration, and radical politics and dissent. They are keen to move beyond traditional panels and to explore more innovative session ideas including workshops, site-specific panels incorporating important places in the city (including the Everyman Theatre, the Tate), walking tours, and so on.

Budget hotels are widely available in the city; DH and team will explore the possibility of making block bookings at preferential rates for delegates. DH will liaise with Tom Wright and Tom Davies to explore and clarify precedents set by Sussex for different bandings for waged and non-waged delegates.

Banquet venues are TBC; LM confirmed that at CCCU 63 regular delegates and 42 students (out of a total of 217 delegates) attended the banquet at a cost per head of £45/£25.

Targeted Research Panels

This is the first year this scheme has run; the top three proposals have been circulated to Exec members and LM thanks all for their responses. The number and quality of the proposals is encouraging for the future of the scheme.

The top two panels will be funded for a period of two years; a further two will be funded beginning at Liverpool 2020 (meaning there will be four Targeted Research Panels at Liverpool).

BW thanks LM for her leadership in coordinating this scheme.

PG Event at Sussex

Olivia Wright has asked for money to fund a PG networking/social event at Sussex; although it is unclear whether money was provided at EBAAS to book venues and purchase nibbles etc, BW proposes a £500 standing commitment going forwards to ensure postgraduates have access to an inclusive and supportive social event.

BAAS 2022

LM extends her congratulations to Keele for their successful bid to host the 2022 annual conference. They have provided two Thursday-Saturday options that spring. LM will liaise with David Ballantyne (lead coordinator) going forwards.

PG BAAS

OW proposes an event at the BL instead of at a HE institution. The BL would like to work with postgraduates based at institution(s) outside London. OW will work with Fran Fuentes at the BL to draw up a call for proposals; the event should focus on the collections and resources available to Americanists at the Eccles Centre.

OW will circulate the draft call for comments once it is ready. BW and the treasurers confirm BAAS will provide funds to support this event in due course.

10. Publications (Joe Street reporting)

Edinburgh University Press: BAAS Paperbacks

Emily West has been forced by personal circumstances to resign as co-editor of the BAAS paperbacks series. She has agreed to continue in position until April. Martin Halliwell and I, in conjunction with EUP’s Michelle Houston, are currently discussing how best to appoint Emily’s successor. Emily’s term was due to conclude in 2023, and the replacement will cover the rest of this term. We have agreed to place an advert on the BAAS email list and will make it clear that our preference is for a female academic, to ensure the gender balance of the editorial team. Martin is drafting the advert, which will include the role’s responsibilities. He will also conduct interviews alongside a member of the BAAS Executive or an academic of similar standing at the Sussex conference. Should any applicants not be able to attend the conference, they will be offered the opportunity of a telephone interview. Unfortunately, Michelle cannot attend, and so will be unable to take part in this.

USSO

Our best month, since the last report, was November 2018 with 7211 views (the fourth highest since USSO was founded).

We have published a regular range of book and conference reviews, alongside:

• State of the Discipline Series, reviewing key works across a range of disciplines within and related to American Studies.
• Zora Neale Hurston Series, gathering reviews and original research articles commemorating the publication of Barracoon.

Practical Resources: In a commitment to increasing USSO as a place for practical resources for postgraduates and early-career scholars, we have established a new “Awards and Grants” page.  This draws together a range of funding opportunities, including conference bursaries, travel grants, and other research funding, and will be consistently updated.  It has proven highly popular, with 153 views in December alone.  We hope to develop this page with further opportunities, and also advice on the writing of applications (potentially some examples, if they can be secured).

Relaunch of #Bookhour: We are thrilled to be relaunching #Bookhour—USSO’s open forum Twitter discussion between scholars and the public—with Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence on Wharton’s birthday, 24 January.  Our experts will be Dr Laura Rattray (University of Glasgow), Anna Girling (University of Edinburgh) and Chiara Bullen (Red Press), all part of the Transatlantic Literary Women network.  In promoting through two online networks (USSO and TLW), we hope to generate a good level of interest and engagement for the relaunch.  We are finalising the text and online panel for February’s Book Hour, which will be linked to LGBT+ History Month.

Adam Matthew Digital: We have recently issued another call for reviews of the Adam Matthew digital collection, which we are in the process of publicising.  We are preparing another call for reviews of digital archives, in the hope that this will add to the Awards and Grants page as another resource for researchers.

Research Posts: As noted in the October 2018 report, one of our primary goals was commission a wide range of research posts, building up a good reserve of content for publication.  We’re making good progress here with:

• A number of individual research posts, submitted in response to our CfP.
• A series on Video Games and American Studies (anticipated publication, April 2019).
• Literature and Visual Imagery in American Studies

In the case of the latter, the series is based on the top papers from PG BAAS.  We’d like to thank BAAS for the generous travel support they provided to members of our editorial team, thereby facilitating the commissioning of these pieces.

Forthcoming Plans:

• Expand and develop Awards and Grants resource, including potential application writing advice.
• Following relaunch, re-establish Book Hour as a monthly event.
• Continue work with Adam Matthew Digital, expanding archival reviews as a resource for researchers.
• Continue commissioning new, original and engaging research posts and series which demonstrate the breadth of work by emerging scholars in American Studies.

Discussions continue (BW, NW, JS) to determine whether BAAS will continue to fund conference attendance for two USSO representatives (as has occurred recently – there is no formal precedent, but ought this to continue?).

BAAS-British Online Archives (formerly) British Records Related to America on Microfilm

Sadly, due to illness, I was not able to attend the timetabled meeting with BOA representatives. We are rescheduling for March, and will give a full report at the April meeting.

Journal of American Studies

See reports below from Nick and Sinead. They have also included vision statements and CVs from two people whom they’d like to add to the JAS editorial board to replace departing members. If you object to either of these candidates, please let me know as soon as you can; otherwise, I’ll pass on our approval.

1. Transition to new teams. The handover is now in operation. On the reviews side, editorial assistant Zoe Bulaitis will finish up officially on 31 January. She has been liaising with (incoming editorial assistant on the reviews side) Francesca White at Leicester to ensure as smooth a transition as possible. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Zoe in the warmest possible terms for the supreme efficiency and professionalism with which she carried out the role, especially during the “handover” phase.

Nick and Sinéad have now taken over all functions on the editorial side and Ben and Zalfa have taken over all responsibilities on the associate editor side. Lauren Mottle continues as editorial assistant to the co-editors-in-chief; we are really grateful for her expertise and for the continuity her renewed appointed has afforded.

2. Editorial board. Following the expiry of the terms of Richard Gray, Caroline Levander and Hugh Wilford on 31 December, we are keen to fill these vacancies as soon as possible. Anke Ortlepp (America and the World) and Georgiana Banita (20C American Literature, possibly with Southern Studies) accepted our invitation to submit a CV and statement. These will now be discussed at the January BAAS Executive meeting.  Unfortunately, all three of our “Transnational American Studies” candidates had to decline our invitation. We are now working our way through the below shortlist (currently awaiting a response from Jasbir Puar):

Transnational American Studies

1. Jasbir Puar, Rutgers
2. Kirsten Silva Gruesz, UC-Santa Cruz
3. Judith Madera, Wake Forest
4. Iyko Day, Mount Holyoke
5. Going forward. At the BAAS publications subcommittee in April, we would welcome the opportunity to return to two issues that were raised towards the end of Celeste and Bevan’s tenure i) the possibility of moving to 5 issues per volume to expand coverage and reduce number of articles per issue (awaiting some detail from Holly Buttimore of CUP on this matter) ii) the possibility of appointing a Managing Editor who would sit between the editorial assistant and the co-editors-in-chief. We have received a bit more information from Holly on the sorts of tasks this member of the team would be responsible for, based on current models in operation at other CUP journals.

11. Development and Education (Kate Dossett reporting)

In November 2018 two members of the public contacted Brian Ward, Chair of BAAS, with concerns that the CFP for Sussex BAAS2019 conference contravened the 2010 Equalities Act.

The BAAS executive committee took the decision to seek legal advice to ensure that the legal basis for its policy was sound.

Below I have summarized the legal advice, the recommendation of the mini-exec for wording of the Liverpool 2020 CFP and a schedule of  next steps required to ensure the policy remains relevant and appropriate to the needs and goals of BAAS.

Summary of Legal Advice

BAAS appointed Salima Budhani of Bindmans LLP. On 20 December 2018 Bindmans presented their advice regarding BAAS’s policy prohibiting all-male panel proposals in its CFP. My summary is below:

• the Policy is likely to be a lawful application of the “positive action” provisions in the Equality Act 2010.
• Budhani suggests some amendments to the Policy for our consideration (see Recommendations) which would reduce the likelihood of a complaint or legal claim.
• BAAS should conduct a review of panel proposals/panel formulations at its conferences in recent years to ascertain:

(a) the proportion of men/women proposed to speak on panels;

(b) the proportion of men/women speaking on panels;

(c) any improvements seen as a result of the Policy.

This analysis would enable BAAS to evidence its reasonable belief that women are underrepresented on conference panels, and it would also allow BAAS to monitor changes which will be important in order to demonstrate that the Policy is proportionate.

• It is crucially important that BAAS continue to collect detailed information from conference delegates/proposers.
• BAAS might also wish to consider writing to Sussex University to explain the reasons the Policy has been put in place and that BAAS intends the Policy to be a form of lawful positive action.

Recommendations:

The mini-exec and DH and team agreed that BAAS should reformulate its conference policy for Liverpool 2020, adding a statement of rationale to the CFP to clarify and explain the policy.

Budhani suggests two options detailed below. New text is highlighted in red.

Option 1:

BAAS is dedicated to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion. We will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and institutional affiliation. We will also give preference to panels that include a mix of participants from across the career spectrum (i.e., from postgraduate to professor). Historically women have been disproportionately underrepresented on panels and BAAS is taking positive action, as permitted under s.158 Equality Act 2010, to enable and encourage the participation of women. For this reason all-male panel proposals will not be accepted. BAAS may constitute an all-male panel or other presentation where absolutely necessary (but any such consideration will be other than via the call for papers procedure).

Option 2:

In order to avoid any risk whatsoever, BAAS could consider amending the Policy itself to allow an exception, for example requiring an explanation as to why an all-male panel is necessary.  It would be very difficult to see how such a Policy could be considered disproportionate.  Example wording:  Option 2: All-male panel proposals will not be accepted save in exceptional circumstances, and they must be accompanied by an explanation of the exceptional circumstances

The mini-exec supported the option 1; KD will put this to the full Exec for discussion.

Next Steps:

1. Monitoring Past Conferences:

Chair of conferences, Laura MacDonald, will contact previous conferences organisers for help collecting data. This might also be supplemented by qualitative research conducted by Sabine Peck, data collected through the membership survey, and reports drawn up by other organisations such as the RHS.

2. PG BAAS Conference 2019; Liverpool BAAS 2020

• BAAS Conference Committee to work with host institutions for PGBAAS 2019 and Liverpool 2020 to design a template to enable conference organizers to collect monitoring information.
• Paper and panel proposers will be required to fill out a brief data monitoring form at the point of submitting a paper/panel proposal and consent to this data being used and stored for a limited amount of time. This will avoid conference organizers/BAAS becoming arbiters of gender identity.
• Conferences to work with host institutions GDPR leads to ensure GDPR compliance.

3. AGM 2019: the new conference policy to be taken to the Sussex 2019 AGM
4. The Future of the Conference:

BAAS agreed to fund a conference in collaboration with the Eccles Centre in American Studies to bring together American studies academics in BAAS, HOTCUS, BRANCH, BrANCA, APG and other professional associations alongside equalities in higher education experts to share best practice and develop resources and guidelines for organizing conferences.  (Nick Grant and Rachel Williams)

Other matters

The Women in American Studies Network met before Christmas, and discussed the possibility of advising other organisations with issues surrounding diversity and inclusion (for instance sharing best practice surrounding the targeted research panels). Work compiling a membership list is ongoing. BAAS have agreed to host on their website the WASN statement of purpose and contact list: KD and OW will contact NG to set this up on the website. Discussions are ongoing to set up an advisory group for WASN to maintain continuity.

The schools working group continues under leadership of NG (with assistance from RW); in particular, NG will finalise details of the new scheme to fund events specifically focused on schools work/creating resources for teachers/outreach and widening participation.

12. Awards (Emma Long reporting)

With thanks to the BAAS Awards team, applications for the various awards are being sent out to committee chairs.  So far things seem to be going smoothly with the exception of some logistical issues with the book award.  For the information of the Exec only at this stage, please find below figures for the number of submissions received for those awards where the deadlines have passed along with the numbers for the last three years for comparison:

Breakdown of Award Submissions 2019

(blanks indicate information pending – recent/extended deadline)

Thank you to everyone who is currently serving on the panels – I know it takes time to judge these awards and all your work is really appreciated.  Particular thanks to the book prize panel who are dealing with a 50% increase in numbers and some issues in getting access to the texts in question.

Equality and Diversity Statistics for Awards:

* denotes the Chair

^ denotes successful applicant (where known)

Provisional information regarding the breakdown of awards as of January 17:

It is worth noting that after our discussions of the past year, the number of submissions to the book prize from female academics has increased significantly and makes up just over half of the submissions.  Many thanks to everyone who flagged up the award through networks or personal connections.

I’ll have a complete breakdown of these numbers and statistics for the AGM and Exec meeting in April.

One thing to raise – unfortunately I won’t be able to attend the conference in April as I will be in the US for research.  As such, I’m looking for a volunteer to annouce the awards at the conference dinner (it only takes a few minutes between dessert and coffee and I’ll make sure you have all the necessary information) … please get in touch if you’re interested.

13. EAAS

Jenny Woodley will attend the forthcoming meeting in Greece and will send her report for inclusion in the next set of minutes.

14. AOB

KD proposes a review of the function, format, and timings of Exec meetings going forward; in particular, should the January meeting (frequently run as a pared-down version focusing primarily on the site visit) be run as a full Exec meeting.

15. Date of next meeting

Thursday, April 25^th at Sussex 2019 conference (venue and timings TBC)

British Association for American Studies

Minutes 294th

Minutes of the 294th meeting of the Executive Committee, held at Northumbria University on Friday, November 2, 2018, starting at 12 noon for all Subcommittees (except Development and Education: 11.30am). Main Executive at 2pm.

1. Present: Brian Ward (Chair), Sylvia Ellis (Secretary), Nick Grant, Eilidh Hall & Nicole Willson (Co-Treasurers), Kate Dossett, Emma Long, Laura MacDonald, Ben Offiler, Chris Parkes, Olivia Wright, Sinead Moynihan, Tom Davies (Sussex 2019), David Hering (Liverpool 2020).

2. Apologies: Althea Legal-Miller, Mercedes Aguirre, Rachel Williams, Joe Street, Bevan Sewell, Celeste-Marie Bernier, Nick Witham, Michael Collins, Emily West, Ken Morgan
3. Minutes of the Previous Meeting

These were accepted as a true record and will now go up on the website.

4. Matters Arising

None.

5. Review of Action List

The Chair asked the Exec to comment on the status of their Action List duties. Items will be addressed under the relevant sections below.

6. Chair’s Business (BW reporting)

(a) Chair’s activities, meetings and correspondence (June 25, 2018 – November 2, 2018)

• BW has spoken with Anna Martz, new Deputy Cultural Affairs Officer at the US Embassy, regarding the BAAS-Embassy Awards, which will continue with a new extension for 2019. There will be two rounds of applications, in January and May, with $76,870.00 (less administration costs), to be disbursed on projects completed before December 30, 2019. Lydia Plath and Matthew Shaw will continue to administer/manage the Awards with Zalfa Feghali, as in 2018 cycle. Carole Holden is standing down and BW explained that we need a replacement, ideally from beyond the academy, or who has strong links to public engagement activities. Cara Rodway is to be approached. As Chair, BW sits on the judging panel ex-officio and will continue to do so for the January round, but he will make way for the new Chair after the AGM/elections in April.

• BW issued an Anti-Harassment Statement via the Newsletter and a broader code of conduct statement should be forthcoming ahead of Sussex 2019.

• BAAS and the Sussex Conference organisers received two queries/complaints regarding the Sussex 2019 CFP and its policy of accepting no proposals for all-male panels. BW pointed out that such calls were increasingly common as a means to address historic underrepresentation of women in academic conferences and that the complainants seem to have misunderstood or misrepresented both substance (male panels aren’t banned) and intent of the BAAS policy, which has been in place since BAAS 2017 and was explained to the complainants. It is unclear if this episode was just a ‘trolling’ exercise and is now over, but BAAS can take more soundings from other professional organisations on their policies and, if necessary, independent legal advice.

• Treasury issues: BW repeated the Association’s gratitude and indebtedness to Cara Rodway for continuing to support our new co-treasurers.

• On the eve of the BAAS PGR Conference at Northumbria, BW thanked the organisers and noted that this was the first conference that included childcare provision, if required. Although nobody took up the option, this was a good thing to have offered in keeping with BAAS’s stated E&D agenda. JW pointed out that sometimes a bursary to help pay for childcare would be more useful than facilities at the conference site and it was agreed that this should be considered, perhaps for Sussex 2019 and definitely beyond.

• BW noted that elections to the BAAS Officer posts of Secretary and Chair loom and that the terms of several other Exec members also expire in 2019. He urged colleagues to start encouraging colleagues to stand – or to consider standing again themselves, if eligible.

(b) Achievements, Announcements and events of note to BAAS members

BW noted with regret the death of Peter Boyle of Nottingham University.

Peter was a BAAS stalwart who initiated the Graduate Teaching Assistantships that took BAAS student members to NH & VA. BW noted a nice obituary by Peter Ling.

Joy Porter, Hull, was awarded a 2018 National Teaching Fellowship, recognising individuals who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession in higher education

Lucas Richert, Strathclyde, a former winner of the Arthur Miller First Book Prize in 2015, has been appointed as the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

7. Secretary’s Business (SE reporting)

(a)       The Exec was asked to co-opt David Hering, Liverpool BAAS 2020 main organiser, to the Exec to sit on the Conferences subcommittee. This was agreed.

(b)        In order to help run the elections effectively, there was some discussion of ‘Election Buddy’ software. This would currently cost $19 for 260 voters.  Some members had experience of this or similar. Further discussions might be held regarding management of online elections and membership lists.

(c)        The next Executive meeting is a mini-Exec/Conference site visit to Liverpool ahead of BAAS 2020 to be held in January/February 2019, with written reports from Sub-Comm Chairs and updates from others.

8. Treasurer’s Business (EH/NW reporting)
9. Bank accounts (as at 1 November 2018)

BAAS Current Account                  £7,916.72

BAAS Savings Account                  £129,422.07

PayPal                                              £12,305.91

BAAS Publications Ltd                   £ 1,486.61

CAF Savings Account                     £20,258.58

TOTAL                           £171,389.89

1. Membership Figures

In March 2018, total active memberships: 618 (as BW discussed in Chair’s Business. Louise Cunningham was unavailable to give latest figures. EH & NW will report back on this in due course).

• Treasurer role
  1. Cara Rodway continues to provide EH & NW with support since the handover – as previously discussed in her consultancy role. EH & NW think that continued support until at least the end of the reporting period would be useful to maintain a high standard.
  2. As of 01.11.18 the mandate change on the bank accounts has successfully gone through. EH & NW will gain full access to the accounts by mid-November 2018.

1. BAAS/US Embassy Awards programme 2018-19

As BW discussed in Chair’s Business, confirmation received that there is extra funding available to extend the Embassy’s Cooperative Agreement for another year. The total amount comes to an additional $76,870.00, to be disbursed on smaller grants completing before December 30, 2019. EH & NW will confirm receipt of first payment in due course.

1. Forthcoming Issues
   1. Further to Cara Rodway and BW having had some initial conversations about how the Treasury admin could be streamlined and improved, confirmation on the distribution of the role needs to be clarified. There is ongoing consultation with Cara on the streamlining of these processes.
   2. In relation to Cara’s consultancy, NW & EH agree with BW’s proposal at Exec 293 that this role should be formalised and that CR should be offered a one-off honoraria in recognition of her continued support
   3. NW & EH agree that a calendar highlighting key busy periods for treasurers’ business would be useful for planning.
   4. As discussed in the Publications Subcommittee (02.11.18), SM asked EH & NW to check the viability of not re-advertising for the editorial assistant if the incumbent leaves the post within a short space of time (i.e. a year). Is BAAS bound by any specific guidelines on advertising and appointment protocols?
   5. All email correspondence with EH & NW should be sent to the following accounts: treasurer@baas.ac.uk; hall@gmail.com; nicwillson@gmail.com.
   6. EH & NW to explore suggestions to increase the ‘rainy day’ fund going forward.

9. Equality and Diversity (ALM reporting)

ALM was unable to attend in person, but sent word that she completed the copy for the Targeted Research Panel CFP in July and advertised the scheme via the Black British Studies network in August. She has already received two enquiries about the scheme, and it appears that these individuals were committed to sending a proposal.

As Laura has noted, the tentative plan is to review the Targeted Research Panel proposals separately from the general conference paper and panel submissions, with Laura and myself joining the Toms to review them for Sussex 2019.

10. Publications Subcommittee (SM chaired Sub-Comm in absence of JS)
11. JAS

New editors of JAS, SM and Nick Witham will be exploring possibilities of going to 5 issues a year with CUP.

The Subcommittee received summary reports from the annual JAS Editorial Board meeting.

Editorial Assistant Role

SM asked EH & NW to check the viability of not re-advertising for the editorial assistant if the incumbent leaves the post within a short space of time (i.e. a year). Is BAAS bound by any specific guidelines on advertising and appointment protocols? EH & NW to follow up.

1. BOA-BAAS

JS/RW have been talking to British On-line Archives – The BAAS-BOA Internship held by Rosemary Pearce in 2018 can be repeated but JS asks if can we support at £1250 instead of £800 to fund this PGR/ECR opportunity.

KD raised the issue of how BAAS is factored into any profits for these publications as BOA is a commercial operation and both she and JS have already done some unpaid consultancy to help them develop ideas. This was discussed further in Exec, which welcomed the opportunity for a BAAS member to do paid work that was likely to be of interest and benefit to some other members. However, it was felt that we need to be hard-nosed about this in negotiations for any renewal to ensure that the scheme represents value for money for BAAS. It was proposed that we might also ask for some co-branding on BOA products we have helped to develop.

It was noted that BAAS can walk away from the BOA deal and find other publishing-related fellowships/internships and initiatives to support – perhaps including helping secure open access for some groups?

The Subcommittee received copies of the excellent blog post and end of internship report from Rosemary Pearce, who worked on a prospective ‘Black Power, Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism from the British Perspective’ collection. Clearly she benefitted greatly from the experience and provided BOA with a very useful appraisal.

11. Development and Education Subcommittee (KD reporting)

1. Matters Arising:

The anti-harassment statement has now been published. It will be posted on the BAAS digest for a couple of weeks and then rested until the build up to the annual conference in April.

1. Equalities Report (ALM)

See Althea Legal-Miller’s report above

• Schools Working Group (NG, RW)

Nick and Rachel submitted a proposal to establish a programme of two schools events with a budget of up to £2000. These would be awarded through a competitive call for proposals.

BAAS executive members interested in joining the Schools Working Group should let Nick or Rachel know.

1. Harassment Policy Working Group (NG, KD and RW)

KD report on how the conference is shaping up. It is planned for Wednesday 16 January at the BL and will include panels that bring together BAAS’s sister organizations, academics who specialize in equalities in HE and promote cross-generational conversation. Nick reported on his investigations into the Charity Commissions and the possibilities of ACAS training.

1. Website Report (NG)

Nick reported that there were ongoing issues with the website including missing banners. Nick and Olivia have both been updating the website and trying to improve it but there is a defined piece of work that needs to be done. This is calculated at around 30 hours and would need to be done by someone with a working knowledge of WordPress.

The committee recommended that BAAS appoint someone to complete this work. NG to follow up.

Agreed:

Set up a website @baas administrative email contact address

Nick and Ben to job share the role until the end of 2018. Ben to take on the role in a job share capacity in 2019 while Nick handover and then steps down.

1. Membership Survey Report (BO)

The membership survey report was published in September 2018. The committee discussed developing a report on its findings for discussion at BAAS AGM April 2019 and to be published either on the BAAS website or other outlets.

Action: Chris Parkes to lead on this.

• Peer reading scheme (RW)

Rachel has set this up and it is underway. LM suggested BAAS might want to fund it to allow colleagues to meet up and discuss work in person.

In the first round of applications there were 25 applicants. In her report Rachel has observed that the majority of applicants were male (8 women out of 25); history was disproportionately represented (especially 20^th/21^st C history). Rachel has been liaising with sister organizations about their ECR and PGR schemes and asked the committee for thoughts on putting together a panel at BAAS 2019 or future BAAS conferences on how best to support PGR/ECRS through mentoring, peer reading and network schemes. The committee was supportive of Rachel’s initiatives and plans for panels addressing these issues at BAAS Conferences.

• Women in American Studies Network and BAAS (KD)

The first meeting of the newly constitute WASN –with representatives from BAAS and her sister organizations will take place on 12 December.

12. Conference Subcommittee (LM reporting)
13. Targeted conference panels (See also 9. ALM above) to be funded for 2019 Sussex and 2020 Liverpool Conferences. Currently, the plan is to offer £2.5k per year (£5k over two conferences) to the winning panel proposal. If take up and quality is sufficient, we may consider making a request for more awards.

1. One of the Sussex 2019 keynotes (Robin Wiegmann) has withdrawn with regrets and so the organisers are seeking an appropriate replacement

• David Hering and the Liverpool 2020 team are looking at possible conference themes, including political dissent and transatlantic connections (embracing American visitors to the city). David will host a site visit in January/February and the dates of the conference are now confirmed as 16-18 April 2020.

2021. Hull, which will host BAAS 2021, is now in the process of confirming room bookings and has a date of 8-10 April 2021. This does not clash with any current meetings/events (OAH etc) and should fall within the Easter break.

2022. The Subcommittee is expecting a bid from Keele to host BAAS2022.

1. The Subcommittee discussed the language of the CFP and the ‘no all-male panel proposals’ (see Chair’s report, 6a above).

• LM reminded colleagues that the annual BAAS PGR conference starts in Northumbria tonight and runs through tomorrow (Nov 2-3).

• The Subcommittee reviewed and awarded Conference grants. Details to follow.

13. Awards Subcommittee (EL submitted written report)
14. EL report that things were quiet on the awards front. The awards have been launched via the website, through the BAAS mailing list, and through related organisations.  There have been some queries and others are likely to follow.

1. EL extended thanks to everyone who agreed to serve on the panels. It takes a lot of time to judge the awards and they only work because people volunteer, so thank you.  It is much appreciated.

• EL asked that that, in light of previous discussions regarding low submission numbers from female candidates for the book award in particular, colleagues should use any networks they have to encourage submissions from female academics, or encourage female scholars they know to submit their work for consideration.

1. EL suggested that it would be worth the subcommittee, and the Executive Committee, thinking about how we communicate information about the awards to members and into the academic community beyond. Are there better ways to make contact with schools and teachers, for example?  Are there tools or networks we could make use of?  Any thoughts or suggestions welcome.

14. EAAS Rep (JW)

JW verbally reported no new activity.

15. Any Other Business
16. OW reported on trial of SLACK for PGRs in wake of EBAAS roundtable panel on ECR/PG experiences at which many expressed desire for a bespoke platform for communication and suggested Twitter wasn’t good enough. SLACK not the answer, but Cardsmith (a brainstorming sandbox) might be worth consideration.

1. Tom Davies (Sussex 2019 Conference co-organiser) had enquired about the approval process for the BAAS conference poster and was advised to send design to BW to circulate to the Exec for comments and approval.

16. Date of next meeting: TBA: Officers and Conference Subcommittee meeting in Liverpool, Jan/Feb 2019

British Association for American Studies

Minutes 293rd

Minutes of the 293rd meeting of the Executive Committee held at Roehampton University on Monday 25 June 2018 at 3.00 pm.

1. Present: Brian Ward (Chair), Sylvia Ellis (Secretary), Kate Dossett, Simon Hall, Laura MacDonald, Rachel Williams, Nick Grant, Ben Offiler, Michael Collins, Olivia Wright.
2. Apologies: Cara Rodway, Joe Street, Chris Parkes, Nick Witham, Emma Long, Bevan Sewell, Celeste Bernier.
3. Minutes of the Previous Meeting

These were accepted as a true record and will now go up on the website.

4. Matters Arising

None.

5. Review of Action List

The Chair asked the Exec to comment on the status of their Action List duties. Items will be addressed under the relevant sections below.

6. Chair’s Business (BW reporting)

(a)        Chair’s activities, meetings and correspondence

1. Eccles Centre

The Eccles Centre will take management of its awards in-house. BAAS members still warmly encouraged to apply, but after this year we won’t be responsible for co-administering/judging them. This has implications for how we work with Louise Cunningham at Keele, who is part-paid by Eccles and helps with our Awards and membership lists/dues, too.

Phil Hatfield, new-ish Eccles Centre Director, is keen to continue to work closely with BAAS and BW will meet with him this week to think about joint initiatives, possibly an annual joint symposium; schools outreach; even a special co-sponsored PGR/ECR fellowship to work specifically on Black British-African American studies. Eccles would also like to have an annual stall at the annual BAAS Conference — and presumably would still want to announce its awards at the BAAS Conference. No change to the annual Eccles lecture at the Conference planned as far as I’ve been told.

1. ii) BAAS-US Embassy Awards, 2018

Second tranche of 12 Awards recently announced in response to the May call for bids. At present there’s a modest underspend of £5-6k for the year, some of which is being held back as a hedge against currency fluctuations. BW currently talking with Matthew Shaw and Lydia Plath about the prospects of running a third call, with a mid-September deadline for smaller amounts £1-2K. Embassy pre-approved this in principle.

Lydia has also alerted me to a possible bid to the fund from JAS to support another roundtable/symposium on teaching Am Studs, akin to the one on teaching African American studies in the UK that featured in the JAS recently. Ben and Zalfa would lead on submitting this application, but it may be that we (as in BAAS) should consider underwriting some kind of annual JAS teaching symposium – we could use revenue from the JAS & BAAS publications account and that would avoid any potential conflict of interest given that Lydia is keen to be involved.

Given the robust state of our finances, ring-fencing £3-5k for this kind of event annually should be possible. We can even make an effort to include teachers, or at least let them know when/where they can read the round table or access any related online resources. BW will ask Ben and Zalfa to put together a formal proposal and run it via Joe Street and the publications sub-committee so the Exec can consider it, ideally in November.

iii) We asked Emma Long to prepare some rough and ready stats on who applies to our various awards primarily so that we can think about how to encourage and support female scholars. We can share responses to her memo and suggestions via email, but it did seem to me sensible to try to get the publicity for the School essay prize out in September as she proposes.

1. iv) Embassy News  

Tim Gerhardson, a big supporter and eminently sensible around the Awards, has finished his tour of duty and moved on. He’ll be replaced in the Cultural Affairs office by Anna Martz in July. In the meantime we don’t know what exactly, if anything, the Embassy will do with us next year in terms of funding American Studies projects — we can’t have the no-questions asked extension again, so it may be we have to bid to administer the money again.

Meanwhile BW will see Sarah Van Horne tomorrow and possibly Kim Du Bois, cultural attaché to chat about such things. SVH is very keen on developing more/new interactive schools outreach materials and we may be able to participate/help with that.

1. v) Treasurer

BW acknowledged his personal and the Association’s huge indebtedness to Cara Rodway for continuing in the Treasurer role while we search for a replacement.  Ben Offiler was unable to take up the Treasurer’s post to which he was elected in April, due to the fact that he was also selected to be co-Associate Editor of JAS. It’s testament to Cara’s ongoing commitment to BAAS that she’s done this role for several months beyond the point at which she should have stepped aside.

BW reminded the Exec that we are currently in mid-election for a successor, and urged everyone to be proactive in encouraging all the BAAS members to vote, not just for treasurer but also for the EAAS representative post.

Once the treasurer election is completed, BAAS faces the prospect of a job-share for the first time in BAAS’s history. That could well prove to be a really good thing, but as neither candidates has any experience of the BAAS Exec or its accounts, there’s going to be a very very steep learning curve.

More generally, BW has talked extensively with Cara about ways to streamline the job and make more, to some extent different, use of our administrative support — Louise (who may have more capacity if she’s not handling the Eccles Awards) and Katie Edwards, who administers the Embassy-BAAS Awards. It may well be that we should be creating a new Financial Administrator role for Katie, Louise or AN Other, as there are a lot of routine but time consuming functions (some aspects of payroll, communications with accountants) that currently fall to the treasurer.

It is also apparent from just these preliminary conversations that there are a number of things we should and could do better — some of them to make sure we’re in full compliance with best financial and accounting practices as laid out by the Charities Commission (not least instituting a more robust system of ‘dual authorisation’ for expenditures, but also chasing up our claims of Gift Aid and VAT reporting). We also need to increase our contingency reserve funds, with some more ethical investments.

The cumulative effect of all these factors relating to our accounts and to the treasurer(s)’s role led BW to propose whether the Executive should ask Cara to stay on in a kind of consultancy-cum-mentoring role until next April (2019). This means that she could prepare a formal set of proposals for restructuring the post for consideration by the Exec, including the new treasurers, who would also be involved in drafting the proposal so that they are on board with the recommendations.

Cara was always going to do a thorough handover to her successor, but in her role as consultant, she would be even more available to help smooth the transition to a new treasury team and help initial liaisons with our accountants, the Embassy and the Charities Commission.

BW also asked the Executive to consider offering some remuneration to Cara for this effort beyond our undying gratitude and flowers.

After a discussion it was agreed that BW would explore this option further, but it was noted that, if an ex-gratia payment is made to Cara for her extraordinary service to the Association, this would be an exceptional case and not serve as a precedent for the future.

1. e) Members’ Achievements

Eilidh Hall has been awarded a Fulbright-Royal Society of Scotland Fellowship to study and work at Trinity University, Texas.

7. Secretary’s Business (SE reporting)

• Reported that she had been administered the election for Treasurer and EAAS rep and the deadline for candidates is 1 Huly 2018.

• Reported that she had updated the Charities Commission website with details of new Exec members after the April election.

• The date of the November meeting to be confirmed.

8. Treasurer’s Business (SE reporting for CR)

• Bank accounts (as at 25 June 2018)

BAAS Current Account     £5,732.47

BAAS Savings Account   £31,293.75

PayPal                             £9,325.33

BAAS Publications Ltd    £72,041.21

CAF Savings Account     £20,258.58

TOTAL                         £138,651.34

• Membership Figures unavailable (to be provided for the minutes – LC on leave at the moment!)

• Treasurer role
  1. Following the AGM in April, CR continued as acting Treasurer following the decision of the Treasurer Elect not to take up the role. With the new election concluding on 1 July, CR hopes to begin handover to the new co-Treasurers at that point.

• BAAS/US Embassy Awards programme 2017-18
  900. The first payment was received from the Embassy on 21/11/2017 of £37,900.00 (equivalent of $50k). The second payment of $50k has not yet been received and needs to be chased

• Accounts for 2017:
  1. Accounts for 2017 for both charity registrations and BAAS Publications have been finalised and submitted.

• Forthcoming Issues
  1. CR and BW have had some initial conversations about how the Treasury admin could be streamlined and improved.
  2. Equality and Diversity

No report.

10. Publications Subcommittee (SE reporting for JS)

• Journal of American Studies

Nothing of significance to report. The editorial teams are in the transitioning phase and are organizing the September editorial board meeting.

• Edinburgh University Press: BAAS Paperbacks

Blinder, The American photo-Text, 1930-60: Final typescript submitted

Bob Lee, The Beats: Submitted manuscript. Currently with Martin Halliwell

Stirrup/Orr, The US-Canadian Border: approved by EUP committee.  This is a co-edited book, and represents a new departure for the series.

Emily will send a message via BAAS mailing list to promote the series and encourage submissions, June 2018

• USSO

USSO is happy to announce the new editorial team for the period 2018-2020:

• Rachael Alexander (Strathclyde) – Co-Editor (2018-2020); Event Reviews Editor (2016-2018)
• Ruth Lawlor (Cambridge) – Co-Editor (2018-2020); Book Reviews Editor (2016-2018)
• Sage Goodwin (Oxford) – Social Media Editor
• Jennie O’Reilly (Liverpool John Moores University) – Event Reviews Editor
• Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo (Edinburgh) – European Relations Editor
• Christina Westwood (Keele) – Book Reviews Editor

The blog will be receiving a makeover over the next few months. The new social media editor, Sage, will spruce up the logo and the interface to give the site a more streamlined look and improve navigability.

Our reviews editors, Jennie and Christina, have proposed a trial run for organising content thematically – in other words, multi-perspectival conference reviews which focus on themes and related panels, such as a BAAS gender panels review or race panels review etc., and book reviews organised according to theme and/or discipline, forming self-contained mini-series. The email system is being updated, with thanks to Nick, Cara and the team at Clear & Creative for their help on this.   The co-editors will meet face-to-face later this month to sketch out our broader vision for the next two years.

Content

The new term begins with the long-awaited State of the Discipline series. This set of reviews will survey cutting-edge work in the field while also celebrating its diversity. To kick off the series are reviews of Andrew Lippman’s ‘The Saltwater Frontier’ and Michael Denning’s ‘Noise Uprising’.

This month saw published reviews of the BRANCA Symposium, the ‘Magazines on the Move: North American Periodicals and Travel’ conference co-organised by the Centre for Travel Writing Studies and the Network for American Periodical Studies, the ‘Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives’ conference at the University of Northampton, and the International Slavery Museum’s ‘Bluecoat 300: Charity, Philanthropy and the Black Atlantic’ symposium. We will be reviewing the Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS) Conference, scheduled to take place in Cambridge later this month.

A new series to commemorate will be run on the historic publication of ‘Barracoon: the Story of the Last Black Cargo’ (Harper Collins, 2018): Zora Neale Hurston – Life and Works. We have commissioned a number of pieces from Hurston scholars for this series and are working with Michael Fuchs (University of Graz) on an exciting video games series, which will display the depth, breadth and diversity of the field of American Studies and its new and emerging components.

Upcoming

Our new European Relations editor, Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo, is working on a CfP that touches on researcher positionality— specifically inviting work that engages with the role and standpoint of European researchers in American Studies. This will be circulated to EAAS, IAAS, H-Net and UPenn. Maria will also be in touch with the Women in American Studies Network to invite work that considers gender as a part of such research specifically, and will also be reaching out to networks for researchers of colour.

As we learned during the interviews of candidates for the editorial positions, some of our most popular features are Book Hour, My Research and 60 seconds. This month will see a new round of 60 seconds posts, one for each member of the editorial team as well as our new BAAS PG rep, Olivia Wright, published every Friday. We are in the process of commissioning more My Research posts, which we plan to update and upscale. Once the blog has been updated, we will also bring back Book Hour. We are in the processing of moving our archived content from Storify to Wakelet since Storify is due to shut down soon.

• British Records Related to America on Microfilm

The advert for the BAAS-British Online Archives archival fellowship, which went live last week. We have received some high quality applications, which is great news. The closing date is 24 June (today) and we’ll be announcing the successful applicant shortly. The fellow will conduct their work over the summer and report back to BOA and BAAS afterwards. It’s taken about two years of organizing to get this fellowship arranged, and I’d like to thank Dave Sarsfield and Kathryn Rose for their commitment to the project, Ken Morgan for his sage advice and support throughout the process, Rachel Williams for her excellent input and Kate Dossett for her expert contribution. We’ll have a full debrief after the fellow’s report is received before arranging for the next fellowship.

• Equality and Diversity:

Just a brief note to confirm that the BAAS-BOA fellowship is fully compliant with both organizations’ E&D policies.

11. Development and Education Subcommittee (KD reporting)

(a)  Constitution of the Development and Education Committee

BW raised the question of the large workload and wide ranging portfolio of this committee. The Committee considered the merits of separating out Schools and Education onto a separate committee but decided that the range of views of the large membership was useful to developing new policies for BAAS.

To address the larger workload the D&E Committee will continue to make more use of working groups, such as the new working group on schools and on conference guidelines and harassment policy. Additionally D&E will meet an hour earlier than other subcoms.

(b)  Harassment at EBAAS

There was a discussion of instances of inappropriate and bullying behaviour on one particular panel at EBAAS. This was reported to members of the BAAS executive and flagged on social media.  The incident was passed up to the Chair of BAAS. BW responded that he was disappointed to learn of this behaviour and that he had spoken with two senior members of BAAS who were present at the panel in question. Both had expressed regret that they had not intervened to stop the inappropriate behaviour.

There was also a discussion about the need to acknowledge that unacceptable behaviours took place at EBAAS. For BAAS members to have confidence in the development of a new policy on conduct at conferences it was agreed there have to consequences and acknowledgement of unacceptable practice at the 2018 conference.

• Working Group on Code of Conduct at Conferences and Harassment Policy

A working group consisting of KD, RW and NG formed to explore how best to develop a set of guidelines or code of conduct for BAAS conferences and a harassment policy.  RW has conducted some research into the guidelines and harassment policies for a range of professional associations both in the U.K and the U.S. These are wide ranging and include guidelines on accessibility as well as zero tolerance of harassing and bullying behaviour enforced by expulsion from the conference and membership of the association. RW will circulate these for the executive committee. NG has been in contact with the Charities Commission to explore how the CC might be able to advise BAAS in relationship to developing a set of procedures to deal with complaints and legal implications.

KD presented a proposal for BAAS to fund a one day event entitled “The Future of the Inclusive Conference.” The purpose of the conference would be to bring together a range of experts including the Charity Commission, UCU and legal advisers, alongside  sister professional associations including HOTCUS, BRANCA, SHAW, BRANCH and BAAS members to explore and shape the what an inclusive conference might look like in the 2020s.

The event would allow BAAS to listen to its membership, seek advice from and share best practice with other professional associations as well as legal advice on developing and implementing a code of conduct and harassment policy.

BW to draft a statement on EBAAS 2018. It would also help BAAS and other professional associations within American Studies think through ways to address the diversity problems highlighted by recent memberships surveys within BAAS and HOTCUS.  For example we could include panels on how to address the perception that there is a gap between expertise and diversity and how to encourage conference organizers to broaden their notions of expertise.

The conference would be free and open to all. We could explore the possibility of filming/live streaming to make it accessible and inclusive.  The proposal included a budget for up to £4000 to include paying speaker fees to experts including legal advice.

• Women in American Studies Network and BAAS

KD briefly introduced a precirculated paper. To ensure the network continues beyond the involvement of those BAAS members involved in setting up the network KD’s proposed setting a steering group which would be coordinated by a BAAS Executive Committee member. The steering group would include representatives from our sister organizations in SHAW, HOTCUC, BRANCH, BrANCA, American Politics Group and the British Association of Early American Historians.  This steering group would meet once or twice a year and would help the different organizations to share ideas and collaborate on events and activities as well as develop a programme of events and online network and database of women in American studies. The subcom agreed:

1. That BAAS serve as the coordinating centre for the WASN steering committee.
2. BAAS commit to having a designated WASN coordinator/representative
3. Contribute to funding steering committee meetings

(e)  Equality & Diversity Standing Item

ALM reported on the CCCU event which she had been involved in.  More useful than this event, was the recent Scholar- Activism Conference at the British Library.

ALM gave a brief overview of key themes of the conference including discussions with community activists on the “Pace of time”- the importance of scholars slowing down to work at a speed and quality of engagement that did not serve only the interests of the scholar. ALM also raised the problem of the pipeline which feeds and creates predominantly white scholars of African American studies in the U.K academy. The importance of working together with communities from the start rather than at moments of convenience was another important discussion.

(f)  Schools Working Group

NG reported that he had met with RW and Katie McGettigan, former member of the BAAS Exec to develop a programme would allow BAAS members to bid to BAAS to host teacher related events. The purpose of the programme would be to bring together teachers in networks with academics. The proposal was to fund up to two events a year at £1000 each.

• Membership Survey Report

The committee discussed the need to publish BO’s report on the membership survey. BO will finish off his draft report and circulate it for publication. All subcom members are encouraged to respond.  The committed discussed where the best place to publish the report might be. MC suggested BO explore publishing it in the Journal of American Studies

• ECR precarious contracts

BW asked the committee to consider a statement about not advertising 10 month ECR contracts. A number of members of the committee raised the question of what criteria should be used if BAAS were to move to rating jobs ahead of deciding whether to advertise them through t weekly BAAS digest. The committee agreed that we needed to explore the issues around ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ECR jobs further.

• ECR Report

The peer reading scheme is ready to launch. RW will let the committee know when it is up and running.

• Website Report (NG)

The committee agreed that NG would report directly to the full executive as we had run out of time.

12. Conference Subcommittee (LM reporting)

(a)        Equality and Diversity

Revised phrasing of the Targetted Research Panel scheme has been included in the CFP for the 2019 conference, and has been posted on the BAAS website.

(b)        EBAAS 2018

Nick Witham has reported that the KCL finance team have been delayed in closing the EBAAS accounts but expect to do so by the end of September.

• BAAS 2019

Tom Wright has confirmed the third plenary speaker will be Barbara Savage, Professor of American Social Thought, University of Pennsylvania. The CFP has been finalised and circulated with a deadline of 1 November for panel and paper proposals.

• BAAS 2020

David Hering is working on a Thursday lunchtime to Saturday lunchtime schedule similar to that used by Canterbury in 2017, 16-18 April 2020. Room bookings have been made, and David is in touch with Sussex regarding reception plans.

• BAAS 2021

Rachel Williams is in contact with the Hull events team and has identified 8-10 April 2021 as the best dates for the conference, the Thurs-Sat after Easter Sunday, so within most UK institutions’ Easter break. Confirming room bookings and designing a conference website will be the next steps, along with site visits to three potential dinner venues.

(g)     BAAS Postgraduate Conference

The Northumbria team have circulated the CFP for the 3 November event, and the conferences subcom was satisfied with their application for BAAS funding in support of the event.

PG rep Olivia Wright shared the Eccles Centre’s interest in holding a joint PG conference with BAAS in 2019. She will liaise with them regarding the application process.

13. Awards Subcommittee (SE reporting for EL)

(a)        Awards Applications from Female Scholars

At the last Executive Committee meeting, concern was expressed about the low numbers of awards applications received from women, especially (although not exclusively) for the book awards.  There was a lengthy discussion regarding ways in which we might encourage more submissions from female scholars.  This touched on issues regarding awareness of the awards as well as a broader agenda aimed at encouraging and supporting female participation in the academy more generally.  Some of the suggestions were:

• Make announcements about the awards at meetings of the Women’s Network and encourage those attending to submit applications. (NB: I mentioned this at the Annual Conference and will look to do so at future events/meetings).
• Advertise the awards through SHAW and other appropriate organisations.
• Contact publishers directly to inform them of the awards and ask them to consider submitting books on behalf of authors.
• Consider holding a book launch or similar event at the annual conference which could highlight work by female scholars.
• A roundtable discussion (at the conference or a discreet event) on recent scholarship by female academics.
• Organise an event at a future conference with previous winners of the book prizes.

The first two on this list are easy to implement immediately.  Contacting publishers may be a bit time consuming but is also possible in the relatively short term.  The final three would require some additional planning and work from the committee.

• Advertising Awards and Increasing Submissions

We have seen an overall reduction in the number of applications for all awards in recent years.  This has been particularly noticeable, however, in the schools, UG, and PG awards categories.  It’s not entirely clear what the cause of this may be, although I suspect some of it may be that our advertising of the awards is not getting to the right people in enough time.  Some suggestions for ways to address this are below, but if anyone has additional thoughts then please do e-mail me:

• Launch the awards earlier (September) to give additional time for advertising.
• The posters we send out each year have some benefit, I think, but I’d also like to look into getting postcards or similar printed for different categories of awards that we can send out to schools and other institutions as well as including in conference packs for events (assuming we have the budget for this).
• Make better use of BAAS members’ university connections with schools to raise the profile of the awards with school students and teachers – possibly starting with Exec. members as a case study.

• New Awards?

There was some suggestion at the last Exec. meeting regarding rethinking some of our awards.  In particular there was discussion regarding the connection between the BAAS awards and the Miller Institute (formerly Centre) awards offered by UEA – they currently offer an article prize and a first book prize.

Two suggestions came from the last BAAS meeting:

1. BAAS to consider offering its own article award.
2. BAAS to take over the first book award.

Either option will require some discussion with the Miller Institute.  At the moment, the Institute is currently looking for a new director as Professor Chris Bigsby will retire from the role in August.  So any changes are currently on hold until someone else is in place, at which time I hope to be able to have a discussion about the Institute’s position regarding the awards.  Again, if anyone has any suggestions then I’m very happy to hear them.

• Awards Season 2018/19

I will shortly be contacting everyone regarding participation on judging panels for the 2018/19 awards round.  If anyone would like to volunteer to sit on any particular award panel(s), or if anyone would like a change from the panel(s) on which they sat last year, then please let me know.  Volunteers for the book prize panel would be especially welcome (and please note this would be the only award you would be asked to judge).  A reminder of the awards we offer:

Book Award

Founders Awards

ECR Travel Award

PG Short Term Travel Award

GTA (Wyoming – TBC)

Barringer Teachers Fellowship (Monticello)

School Essay

UG Essay

PG Essay

Public Engagement and Impact Award

Eccles Centre Awards

14. EAAS

No report.

15. Any Other Business

NG reminded the Exec that Clear & Creative are changing servers and there may be some issues related to this.   He also suggested that the website role may need separating from the newsletter role due to excessive workload.  OW volunteered to take on this role.  Training on the web pages was recommended for the next Exec.

16. Date of next meeting: Friday 2 November 2018.

Secretary:  Professor Sylvia Ellis / Email:  Sylvia/ Phone: 01913 342570

British Association for American Studies

Minutes 292nd

Minutes of the 292nd meeting of the Executive Committee held at King’s College, London on Tuesday 3 April 2018 at 2.30 pm.

1. Present: Brian Ward (Chair), Sylvia Ellis (Secretary), Cara Rodway (Treasurer), Kate Dossett, Sue Currell, Simon Hall, Joe Street, Laura MacDonald, Rachel Williams, Paul Williams, Emma Long, Nick Grant, Katerina Webb-Bourne,
2. Apologies: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Bevan Sewell, Ben Offiler, Althea Legal-Miller, Katie McGettigan
3. Minutes of the Previous Meeting

These were accepted as a true record and will now go up on the website.

4. Matters Arising

None.

5. Review of Action List

The Chair asked the Exec to comment on the status of their Action List duties. Items will be addressed under the relevant sections below.

6. Chair’s Business (BW reporting)

As usual I want to start with a word of thanks to all members of the Executive, elected and co-opted, for their efforts on behalf of the Association since we last met in February and over the course of the year.  In particular, I want to thank those whose term of office is coming to an end at this conference, not least Cara Rodway, who been a marvelous treasurer and a much valued colleague and sounding board for me. Thanks also to retiring elected members of the Exec: Katerina Webb-Bourne, Simon Hall and Katie McGettigan; and to our co-optees: Martin Halliwell, Althea Legal-Miller and Laura MacDonald. I’d like to add a special word of appreciation to Paul Williams, our outgoing Chair of the Conferences Sub-Committee, who has been dealing with the unique challenges posed by the scale and complexity of EBAAS as well as helping us to plan for the future. Similarly, although there’ll be plenty of other opportunities to thank all those who worked on the EBAAS Conference Organizing Committee this year, I’d like us to formally record our gratitude to Dan Matlin and Nick Witham and their team for pulling this together.

(a)      Chair’s activities, meetings and correspondence (January 11 – 2 April 2018)

Susan Hodgett is about to move from the University of Ulster to take up a post as Professor of Area Studies at UEA; Susan is also the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Blurring Genres Network: Recovering the Humanities for Political Science and Area Studies, with which some colleagues have been involved.

Emma Long (UEA) – 2 year ECR Leadership Grant from AHRC to work on evangelicals and US political culture;

Jacqueline Fear-Segal (UEA) & David Stirrup (Kent) – 3 year AHRC grant to study Native Americans in the UK.

Mike Cullinane (Roehampton) and Peter Knight (Manchester) promoted to Professor.

1. b) Membership Survey

I’m glad that thanks to Ben Offiler we’ve got some data to work with from the BAAS Membership survey. We’ve been discussing that in the Dev and Ed sub-committee and over the next year we should continue to process and respond to what that reveals and tie it to our ongoing efforts to increase access to and diversity within BAAS.

1. c) Helping the Precariat

One of the things clearly brought out by the recent UCU strike action was the vulnerability of vast numbers of our junior colleagues in the so-called ‘Precariat.’ While BAAS is not in a position to solve structural problems within Higher Education in the UK, we’re obviously aware of the special challenges faced by many of our junior members and we should continue to explore how we can do more to help.

In a related move, Paul has drafted notes on how to extend support for conference attendance by international scholars from non-EAAS countries with a GDP of less than $30k per capita, through an International Hardship Fund scheme.

1. d) JAS

I would like us to formally record thank to the outgoing co-editors of the Journal of American Studies, Celeste Marie-Bernier and Bevan Sewell, who have tremendously enhanced the quality, reach and clout of JAS during their term at the helm. Interviews during and in the immediate aftermath of this conference to find successors for Celeste and Bevan and for Sinead Moynihan and Nick Witham, who have done equally sterling work during their time as co-associate editors.

1. e) Embassy-BAAS Awards

As you know, this year, Lydia Plath of Warwick University and Matthew Shaw, head librarian at the Institute for Historical Research, are managing the US Embassy-BAAS scheme and will have roughly the same amount to disburse as last year (c.$84k). The first round of bids to the scheme has already been and gone and, as before the competition has been fierce. We’ve been able to support 12 very different projects out of 25 applications. The deadline for the second round is May 10, 2018.

1. f) REF

Over the past 18 months or so, I have submitted responses to various HEFCE consultation documents on REF2021, and fed into responses from other professional associations, the Arts and Humanities Alliance and UK Council of Area Studies Associations.

Due to a conflict of interest, I had to recuse myself from the process whereby BAAS nominated potential sub-panel members for REF2021 and I’d like to thank Kate Dossett for running that. I’d also like to thank all colleagues who were willing to put themselves forward for consideration to serve.

The sub-panel membership was announced in late March; Martin Halliwell will be on the criteria setting panel for English; Joy Porter on the same for History; and I’ll once more be on the Area Studies, as will Matthew Shaw. At the assessment phase, we’ll be joined by Faye Hammill on Area Studies.

There is still opportunity for further representations and further appointments and I’ll be looking at what we can do to get some bespoke Americanist representation onto the sub-panels for Politics and Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies.

1. g) AOB

Just advance notice that I’m hoping that in July-August 2018, Zeinab Ghasemi, an American Lit/American Studies scholar from the University of Tehran will be a visiting fellow at Northumbria for about 4-6 weeks, during which time she’ll be trying to visit a number of American Studies colleague and programmes around the country. Obviously, the summer isn’t really the best time to do this, but she has to be back in class in late August, so that’s all she can do. She comes with money to travel, but – if the trip materializes – I’ll be contacting BAAS colleagues to see who might be around to chat with her over the summer.

7. Secretary’s Business (SE reporting)

• She had worked with Louise Cunningham to provide membership data (non-confidential elements) for the BAAS intern.

• She continued to field requests from media outlets for speakers and will work with Nick Grant on a directory of members’ research interests.

(c)  Preparations for the BAAS elections had gone smoothly.

(d) The date of the June meeting to be confirmed.

8. Treasurer’s Business (CR reporting)

• End of 3 year term – thank you to fellow Executive committee members and to the wider BAAS community for their patience!
• Membership figures – currently over 600 members – 618 members in the online system (inc. 281 concessionary memberships); this is down slightly from last year when there were 635 members in total (331 concessionary memberships); due to the failure of the Standing Orders in January Louise Cunningham has devoted time to a full clean-up of the membership list and she is confident that these figures reflect members who are actively paying.
• Account balances (as of 03/04/2018)
  739. BAAS Charity Barclays Current Account £2,739.77
  740. BAAS Charity Barclays Savings Account £91,153.48
  741. BAAS Charity Shawbrook Savings Account £20,258.58
  742. PayPal £7,871.21
  743. BAAS Publications Barclays Current Account £88,849.43
• Presentation of the 2017 accounts –
  1. [at AGM – proposer and seconder needed]
  2. the accounts for both BAAS Charity and BAAS Publications are very healthy. The headline figure is that BAAS Publications will Gift Aid £137,655 to BAAS Charity. The BAAS Publications income is higher this year as there has been a change in accountancy practice which means that income earned in 2017 is incorporated into the accounts, even though some of it won’t actually be received until 2018.
• Activities since last meeting
  1. Savings account (in Feb 2017, £20k of our reserves was put into a one-year fixed rate savings account with Shawbrook Bank, through the Charities Aid Foundation, with a return of 1.30% gross), this has now matured and been rolled over for another year; the interest earned in 2017-18 was £258.58.
  2. Following the opening of new bank accounts last year as part of the asset transfer required during our change of status with the Charity Commission, members’ existing Standing Order payments failed; this was followed by a major effort to update member payment methods and to clear up the membership database. As noted under (1) above, this has now been completed.
• Forthcoming
  1. Handover – will aim to wrap up outstanding payments and prepare handover notes before passing over to the new Treasurer; also propose to travel together to meet our new partner contact, John Saxon at Moffatts Chartered Accountants in Manchester in April or May
  2. Reserves – we have aimed for 18 months of unrestricted spending (generously calculated at approx. £55k); I suggest that the incoming Treasurer put another £25k in savings this year – the accountant calculates that BAAS Charity currently has reserves of £…. Which represents 27 months of unrestricted spending
  4. Equality and Diversity (Althea-Legal Miller reporting)

No report.

10. Publications Subcommittee (JS reporting)

• Journal of American Studies

Another successful and busy year for JAS.  Subscriptions continue to be healthy.  The Journal is in excellent shape. Next year’s issues are full and we have agreed to a small increase in the editorial board, in line with BAAS’s equality and diversity campaign; such popularity reflects the journal’s standing in the field. Bevan and Celeste stand down at the end of the year. We shall be announcing their successors shortly, but as important, I want to put on record BAAS’s profound thanks to B&C and their associate editors Nick Witham and Sinead Moynihan for their impeccable and indefatigable work on JAS over the last few years. As I’m sure you’ll agree, the journal is in the best shape it’s ever been in, and this is due in no small part to their leadership of the editorial board. On a personal note, they’ve been a delight to work with.

• USSO US Studies Online

USSO continues to attract a vast array of posts on too many subjects to go into here. I would, however, like to point out their excellent guest-edited series on Muslim American women’s writing. USSO consistently gains over 200 visitors each day, with over a third coming from the US. They really are paving the way for BAAS in the international arena. Sadly, USSO’s editors are moving onto pastures new soon. Jade Tullett and Todd Carter will be replaced as editors by Ruth Lawlor and Rachael Alexander; elsewhere USSO’s European Relations editor Katharina Donn and our Social Media editor Christina Brennan, are also moving on. I want to thank them all, especially Jade, for their fantastic work. It has truly been an honour and a privilege working with them on BAAS’s behalf.

• EUP

Continues thanks to the excellent leadership of Martin Halliwell and Emily West. It recently published Mark Newman’s study of African American nationalism, and seven further books are in the pipeline. They’re always on the lookout for new monograph proposals and will happily discuss any ideas you have.

• American Studies in Britain blog

Please consider submitting your news and any other submissions that you think are appropriate.

• BRRAM

I am working with the publishers (British Online Archives) on new initiatives. This includes a series of archival fellowships that we intend to start this summer. Please keep your eyes on the BAAS newsletter for details.

11. Development and Education Subcommittee

(a)        Equality & Diversity

Equality continues to be a key priority for the Development and Education Subcommittee in 2017-18.

• We organized Trans Equality training for the  BAAS executive in November 2017 and will continue to develop policies on Trans inclusion particularly in relation to conferences and BAAS operational policies. Thanks to Katie McGettigan for taking a lead on this and setting it up
• A member of the executive is appointed each year to lead on equality initiatives. Particular thanks to Althea Legal-Miller who was co-opted onto to the executive committee in 2017 and has shaped  discussions and policies on this area.

(b)        Membership Survey

Closely tied to our equality initiatives has been the Membership Survey. In April 2017, BAAS conducted a wide-ranging survey of its membership. The purpose of the survey was to consult and obtain the views of BAAS members on a number of important issues facing the American Studies community and academia in the UK, more broadly. The survey was designed to investigate five specific issues:

• the demographic makeup of the American Studies community in the UK;
• gender and racial inequality
• sexual harassment;
• the health of the discipline;
• and what BAAS can do to support its members.

The survey was launched at the annual conference in 2017; members were able to complete the survey via Survey Monkey. It involved a mixture of quantitative and qualitative questions. In total, 111 members, ranging from postgraduate students to retired professors, completed the survey.

This report outlines some of the findings of the survey. It brings together the different questions into six broad themes:

• BAAS demographics
• Departments and institutions
• Discrimination and harassment
• State of the field
• Looking to the future
• Challenges, suggestions and the role of BAAS

The survey was developed by Ben Offiler and we thank him for his work in setting up the survey and for his draft report which will soon be  published on the BAAS website.

Additionally we plan to develop a number of think pieces for broader public circulation which address some of the key issues raised by members including:

-precarity and early career researchers contracts

-gender inequality

-sexual harassment

The report also details members suggestions  for improvements including greater interaction with and the BAAS executive committee. We will report back on these in due course but a first initiative will be to use the BAAS weekly digest which will include an ANY QUESTIONS section with contact information.

Finally another initiative we are developing out of the membership survey is the need for a clear BAAS statement and policy regarding sexual harassment. A working group has been established to develop a clear policy and statement and explore the legal implications of a BAAS grievance procedure in regard to harassment of any kind at either the BAAS Conference or other events which BAAS sponsors.

 (c)    BAAS Archive

In 2017 BAAS collaborated with the Cadbury Research Library at Birmingham University which holds the BAAS archive.  The project Women in BAAS involved a research internship to explore the history of women in BAAS as reflected through the archive.

The purpose of this paid internship was

• to provide opportunities  for early career scholars to gain valuable research and employability skills above and beyond those offered by a PhD programme
• to raise awareness of the archive held at the Cadbury Research Library  and encourage its use in scholarly research
• build on and develop our partnership with the Cadbury Research Library with a view to exploring  future collaborative projects around the archive
• to raise awareness of BAAS
• to research BAAS’s history in order to inform policy making in areas of strategic importance, for example equality and diversity initiatives.

Sabina Peck, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Leeds was awarded the first internship.

She has developed a series of blogs outlining her findings the first of which has been posted on U.S. Studies Online. She has also conducted a series of oral history interviews with former chairs and members of BAAS including women involved in founding a women’s network in the 1990s.  A poster exhibition tracing the history of women and gender in BAAS was displayed at EBAAS 2018.  Thanks to Sabina and to Mark Eccleston at the Cadbury Library for this important project. BAAS is looking to promote new research into the archive in 2018-19 and to develop another theme for an internship in 2018-19.

(e)        Work with Schools

We have been exploring new possibilities for developing our work with schools. These include working with the British Library to develop a teacher’s resource day. Many thanks to Mercedes Aguirre who is leading on this. We hope to develop a series of events in the coming year through a newly constituted schools working group led by Nick Grant.   Also thanks to Katie McGettigan who is continuing to develop web resources for teachers.

(f)         Website:

BAAS’s website and online profile continues to grow from strength to strength. Nick Grant has been meeting with our web design team Clear and Creative. We will be working with them and a paid internship to improve the website. Thanks to Nick Grant for his work on this.

(g)        Early Career:

Rachel Williams the Early Career Representative is developing a peer reading scheme for early career members. The scheme will enable ECRS to be matched up with another ECR to read each other’s work and provide feedback. It stems from feedback from ECR members about the chasm that can open after the PhD and at the start of academic careers when prioritizing research and writing and getting people to read your work has to compete with intense demands of new and diverse teaching.

It’s been a busy year for the development and education committee. We have learned a lot about and from the BAAS membership and hope to continue to find ways for BAAS to shape and lead important discussions about precarity and inequality in higher education and American studies.

12. Conference Subcommittee (PW reporting)

(a)        Equality and Diversity

PW reported on The Human Body and World War Two conference held at the University of Oxford in March 2018, which used a SCG of £300 to subsidize childcare for attendees. This was not exclusively available to PGRs, but in the end the people who took it up were PGRs or unwaged scholars. The total cost of childcare at the event was £729 (this included additional insurance) and this covered up to 6 children.

At the Executive Committee and the AGM the BAAS Chair Brian Ward committed to rolling out a similar initiative at future BAAS-sponsored events, in the first instance at the BAAS PG Conference.

Coming out of the 2017 BAAS PG Conference, KWB asked whether – running parallel to the recent development of Targeted Research Panels – there was an opportunity to add more PGR development sessions and networking events to the BAAS Annual Conference? This would be a way of bringing more PGR scholars ‘to the table’, something felt to be lacking in the current conference set-up. Although there are many informal ways that the BAAS Annual Conference brings PGRs and established scholars into conversation, something a little more formal and thorough (e.g. a speed-dating-style forum to share research interests) was mooted. It was noted that another American Studies association in Europe required the keynote speakers at its annual conference to attend PGR networking sessions. All agreed more steps could be taken towards this goal.

In the Executive Committee some preliminary observations on the members’ survey led to a series of proposals relating to the running of the BAAS Annual Conference. These included:

• More transparency and interaction with the Executive Committee.
• Guidance provided to panel chairs, including a reminder on BAAS’s policy on harassment.
• When registering for the BAAS Annual Conference, attendees would have to tick a box confirming they have read the BAAS policy on harassment.

(b)        BAAS Conferences 2017-19

At our last BAAS Annual Conference at Canterbury Christ Church University there were 55 panels, 163 papers, and 236 delegates. CCCU 2017 pioneered the new format of running from a Thursday to a Saturday lunchtime. This format will continue at future BAAS Annual Conferences, and just to remind you, forthcoming conferences will be held at the University of Sussex in 2019 and the University of Liverpool in 2020. I am pleased to report to the AGM that the 2021 BAAS Annual Conference has been awarded to the University of Hull.

The deadline for applications to host the 2022 BAAS Annual Conference will be the end of this year. Once my successor is in place, they will also be able to talk about the process of submitting a bid, and we can send you a successful sample bid from the recent past. Organizing a BAAS Annual Conference is a demanding role, as I can attest from experience, but it is a rewarding one and a great way of making new friends in the American Studies community.

2019 will also see the return of the Hardship Fund that enables PGRs and ECRs to participate at the BAAS Annual Conference and, as Brian has mentioned, the launch of an International Hardship Fund.

No further updates on 2019, but conference organizers Tom Davies and Tom Wright are both speaking at the drinks reception on the first day of EBAAS to invite attendees to come to the 2019 BAAS Annual Conference at Sussex.

The year’s (2018) conference is a collaboration with the European Association for American Studies, and it represents the biggest BAAS Annual Conference to date. My thanks to everyone involved: I am awestruck by your extraordinary abilities of logistics and quick-thinking. To show my gratitude, I would like to thank them individually. First, Christine Okoth, the conference coordinator, and the members of the Organizing Committee: Myka Abramson, Uta Balbier, Martin Halliwell, Zoe Hyman, Daniel Matlin, Cara Rodway, Edward Sugden, Katerina Webb-Bourne, and Nick Witham.

Katerina Webb-Bourne will give you more details about the 2017 BAAS Postgraduate Conference held at the University of Essex, but for now I would like to thank Maria-Irina Popescu and Jessica Houlihan and congratulate them for organizing such a productive and intellectually rich and varied event.

(d)        BAAS Postgraduate Conference

One application was received to host the BAAS PG Annual Conference later in 2018, from Northumbria University. The application was of good quality and the Subcommittee was pleased to award the event to Northumbria.

KWB and PW have yet to finish the briefing notes for organizers of the BAAS PG Conference but they are almost completed. The briefing notes will reflect the recent agreement that organizers of BAAS PG Conference can claim back the cost of conference registration and banquet at the next BAAS Annual Conference.

(e)        Small Conference Support Grant

In 2017 various events were awarded Small Conference Support Grants (SCGs) by the Conferences Subcommittee. These included:

• Pocahontas and After: Historical Culture and Transatlantic Encounters, 1617-2017 (Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and the Institute of Historical Research, 16-18 Mar. 2017). Travel grants were awarded to enable postgraduates and early career researchers (ECR) to attend the conference.
• Trump’s First 100 Days (University of Reading, 2 May 2017). This conference marked the launch of the Monroe Group research network at the University of Reading. The day began with a keynote address by Professor Andrew Rudalevige (Bowdoin College), live-streamed on Facebook and followed by 9,000 people. 60 people attended from around the UK and funding from BAAS allowed 29 postgraduate students to attend the conference at a reduced rate. The conference proceedings will be published by Palgrave MacMillan in September 2018.
• Hardboiled History: A Noir Lens on America’s Past (University of Warwick, 19 May 2017). This conference re-evaluated the function of noir across a variety of media, reflected in the keynotes from Helen Hanson (University of Exeter) and Warren Pleece (graphic novelist). The grant from BAAS helped to subsidize postgraduate attendance, which was subsequently free, and PGRs made up 80% of the delegates.
• Magazines on the Move: North American Periodicals and Travel (Nottingham Trent University, 22 Sept. 2017). This was the third Network of American Periodical Studies (NAPS) symposium, hosted by Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Travel Studies (CTWS), with a keynote by Professor Andrew Thacker (Nottingham Trent University). The Small Conference Support Grant went towards the travel expenses of two of the PGRs presenting papers.
• Contesting Power: Rights, Justice, and Dissent in America and Beyond, Historians of Twentieth-Century United States (HOTCUS) Annual Postgraduate Conference (University of Cambridge, 21 Oct. 2017). PGRs delivered papers in the first half of the day, and the afternoon was given over to a roundtable and workshop giving advice to postgraduates on professionalization. The event ended with a keynote speech from Kerry Pimblott (University of Manchester). The Small Conference Support Grant provided travel bursaries for six postgraduate presenters.
• American Politics Group annual colloquium (Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, 10 Nov. 2017). The funding from BAAS was used to reduce the cost of attendance for students.
• The Not-Yet of the Nineteenth-Century U.S., 3^rd Biennial British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA) Symposium (University of Exeter, 17-18 Nov. 2017). Keynotes were delivered by Professor Agniezska Soltysik Monnet (Lausanne) and Professor Lloyd Pratt (Oxford) and a special session was convened on Digital Humanities and nineteenth-century US literature. The Small Conference Support Grant was used to subsidize undergraduate and postgraduate attendance at the event.
• The Transnational American Periodical (Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, 16 Dec. 2017). This conference was arranged in conjunction with the Network of American Periodical Studies (NAPS) and funding from BAAS was provided for postgraduate and ECR travel bursaries and for a ‘Best Postgraduate Paper’ prize.

In 2018 the following events have been awarded Small Conference Support Grants:

• The Cartographic Imagination: Art, Literature and Mapping in the United States, 1945-1980 (18-19 May 2018).
• The Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA) Annual Conference (3 Mar. 2018).
• Did Liberalism Fail in the United States after 1945? Identity and Conflict from Truman to Trump (1 June 2018).
• The Human Body and World War II (23-24 Mar. 2018).

In the last few days we have made decisions on applications to the SCG scheme received by 1^st April (the deadline for the scheme is always 1^st April and 1^st November each year, and we aim to inform applicants of our decision within 4 weeks). The SCGs are separate from the BAAS-US Embassy scheme that Brian referred to earlier, and if you are organizing an American Studies event please think about applying for one of them. From November 2018 onwards, the amount you can apply for will increase to £350 per event.

The SCGs are primarily aimed at facilitating PGR participation in our scholarly community and awards can be used to subsidize the cost of PGR attendance, or for travel bursaries, and at the last conference I mentioned The Human Body and World War II (23-24 Mar. 2018) an SCG was used to subsidize the cost of childcare. This directly enabled PGRs to attend and present research at the event. As Brian mentioned, the success of this has prompted the Executive Committee to look into subsidizing childcare at future BAAS conferences, starting with the BAAS PG Conference.

6 applications were made to the SCG. All of these were for high-quality events that would have concrete benefits for PGRs and/or would reach out to communities outside higher education in fruitful ways. All 6 applicants were funded.

Following confusion over a recent conference to which BAAS awarded an SCG for travel bursaries, it was agreed to specify to successful award holders that BAAS transfers the money in one block and that distributing it in smaller allotments is the responsibility of the award holder.

There was a shared feeling that the revised application form for the SCG scheme calling for greater attention to Equality and Diversity had only been partially beneficial. Specifically, the revised form had successfully compelled all applicants to reflect on the spaces and facilities at their events and in some cases had led to CFPs stipulating no all-male panels, but what still is not really getting through is that organizers might encourage and include scholars from communities currently under-represented in UK American Studies.

As agreed with the BAAS Treasurer in advance of the meeting, PW informed the Subcommittee that the SCG had £3500 to distribute in 2018 and that from November 2018 onwards applicants can bid for awards of up to £350.

(f)         AOB

In the Executive Committee, the question of funding for members of the Exec to attend the BAAS Annual Conference was raised. The position is that BAAS will cover the cost of attending the full conference if members of the Exec can’t get funding from their own institution. It was agreed that a clear statement to this effect would be made at the next meeting of the Exec for the benefit of new and old members.

I have begun discussing Equality and Diversity matters, and I will say more about this area before finishing my report. If you applied to the SCGs recently you will know we have revised the application process to give greater prominence to Equality and Diversity. If you are thinking about applying, I would urge you to make sure this aspect of your application is substantially addressed. It certainly does mean paying attention to the spaces involved in your event and creating a culture of inclusivity, but it also means what you do before the event starts, namely trying to reach and include communities of scholars currently under-represented in American Studies in the UK. Equality and Diversity is a key criterion for awarding an SCG and we hope future applications will take this into account more fully.

So ends my last report as Chair of the Conferences Subcommittee. I would like to thank Louise Cunningham, who helps administer the SCGs, as well as the BAAS Officers Brian Ward, Sylvia Ellis, and Cara Rodway, and the rest of the Executive Committee, especially my fellows Subcommittee members: Tom Davies, Martin Halliwell, Daniel Matlin, Laura MacDonald, Katerina Webb-Bourne, Nick Witham, and Tom Wright. PW thanked the gathered members of the Conferences Subcommittee for their sterling work this year.

13. Awards Subcommittee (EL reporting)

Breakdown of Award Submissions 2018

1. Thank you to everyone who participated in the awards this year – everything ran really smoothly and that’s because of everyone’s hard work.

2. Particular thanks to Louise and Katie for their tireless work behind the scenes keeping everything running, working evenings and weekends around deadlines to ensure panels got the award applications and successful applicants were told promptly.

3. This year BAAS made 24 awards in 10 categories (total: £17,700); the Eccles Centre made an additional 9 awards in 5 categories (£18,400); the Miller Centre made 3 awards in 2 categories (total: £1000).

4. Adam Mathew have ended their sponsorship of the essay prize – this will not run in future. We thank them for their past support of the award and their work with BAAS.

5. Eccles Awards will be announced at the drinks reception at the Eccles Centre for American Studies on Thursday April 5. The BAAS awards will be announced at the conference banquet on Friday April 6.  Awards booklets listing all the winners will be available at both events.

Equality and Diversity Statistics for Awards:

* denotes the Chair

^ denotes successful applicant (where known)

Issues arising/questions for discussion:

• How to encourage more women to apply for the book awards (1 of 10 for BAAS award; 1 of 4 for Miller award)?
• Some problems with publishers not recognising the Miller Award – do BAAS want to consider offering two book prizes/possibly a first book prize? Would this clash with the Miller Awards?
• Engagement with schools – of the six essay submissions and one Teacher’s Fellowship submitted all but one of the essay submissions came from private/selective grammar schools. Thinking about how we reach out to schools and engage them in awards but also generally, would seem to be something for us to consider.

14. EAAS (SC reporting)

15. Any Other Business

16. Date of next meeting: To be confirmed.

Secretary:  Professor Sylvia Ellis / Email:  Sylvia/ Phone: 01913 342570