American Council Of Learned Societies Research Articles

Practices in the translation and editing of humanities and social science texts for publication in English: A qualitative survey of language professionals

In 2006, the American Council of Learned Societies published the Guidelines for the Translation of Social Science Texts. Following a panel discussion at the annual conference of Mediterranean Editors and Translators on their continued relevance in an international publishing landscape increasingly populated by writers who use English as an additional language (EAL) a qualitative survey consisting of 10 open-ended questions was conducted in 2020 through several European language professional associations. At that time, the extent to which the practices of translators into English and editors working directly with EAL authors in the humanities and social sciences conformed to the self-reflexive methods of the Guidelines was not known. The 52 responses from language professionals based in European countries (44), North America (7), and Israel (1) were coded to obtain qualitative data on professionals’ opinions and practices. Respondents’ self-identifications were roughly divided between translators and editors, but further examination revealed 25 in fact working as translator–editors, 14 as editors, and 13 as translators. Most respondents engaged in some form of communication with the authors of the source texts regarding their translating/editing choices, although the strategies varied. Most attempted to retain the authors’ ‘voice’ but also felt the competing need to comply with prevailing expectations of international academic discourse in English. This article presents themes that emerged from the survey, which revealed both compliance with and divergence from the Guidelines across diverse academic and linguistic contexts, suggesting the need for updated guidelines and additional research on these mostly occluded author–language professional practices.

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

‘What the Far East Means to America’: The Politics of Area Studies during the Interwar Years

Abstract During the interwar years, Americans redefined the meaning of Asianness amid new geopolitical conditions and shifts in global axes of power, thereby relocating the role that Asia played in the U.S. grand strategy to recalibrate the nation-state’s position within the international community. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a consortium of international non-governmental organizations such as the Institute of Pacific Relations and the American Council of Learned Societies collaborated with universities in the production of knowledge. Historians and international relations specialists have touted the creation of area studies at institutions of higher learning at the end of World War ii as one of the principal responses for stemming the proliferation of communism. Instead of focusing on the 1950s and 1960s as the formative era of the academic discipline as many scholars have done, this article illuminates the earlier interconnections between the nascent intellectual fascination with Asia and the reinscription of otherness. Ultimately, anxiety over growing Japanese aggression in the Pacific aided the development of U.S. hegemony as the academic system became part of an inter-imperialist amalgamation of a multitude of economic, intellectual, and political processes and mechanisms that worked together to engineer American influence within and over Asia.

Shaping Minds or Defending Democracy? How Scholars Have Interpreted Major Reports on Higher Education From the 1940s

ABSTRACT In the 3 years prior to Harry Truman’s establishment of the President’s Commission on Higher Education in 1946, the Association of American Colleges (AAC), the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and Harvard University all released reports on the relationship of general or liberal education to the political order. This historiographical essay assesses recent scholarship on these major reports of the 1940s by scholars including Jamie Cohen-Cole, Andrew Jewett, Bryan McAllister-Grande, George Marsden, and Louis Menand. The essay examines why intellectual historians have often given more attention to the Harvard “Redbook” than to the Truman report and why they have almost completely ignored the book-length ACLS report (the AAC report was much smaller but also gets little attention). I argue that intellectual historians’ greater attention to the Redbook is largely due to its singular focus on general education (as compared to the more wide-ranging Truman report) and to the greater ease of accessing archival records of the Harvard committee as compared to the Truman Commission. I also assert that some key interpreters have misunderstood the Harvard Redbook and its relationship to the Truman report. Correctly understanding the differences between the two helps us to see that distinct intellectual positions underpinned competing visions for undergraduate education in the United States after World War II.

A Letter from the American Historical Association to California’s Placentia–Yorba Linda Unified School District

Research Article| May 01 2023 A Letter from the American Historical Association to California’s Placentia–Yorba Linda Unified School District James R. Grossman James R. Grossman JAMES R. GROSSMAN is executive director of the American Historical Association. Formerly vice-president for research and education at the Newberry Library, he has taught at the University of Chicago and the University of California, San Diego. The author of Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration and A Chance to Make Good: African-Americans, 1900–1929, Grossman was project director and coeditor of the print and digital Encyclopedia of Chicago. He is editor emeritus of the University of Chicago Press book series “Historical Studies of Urban America,” which he abandoned to his colleagues after fifty volumes. Articles and short essays have focused on urban history, African American history, ethnicity, higher education, and the place of history in public culture. Short pieces have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time, New York Daily News, North Shore Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hill, and elsewhere. Grossman’s consulting experience includes history-related projects generated by BBC, Smithsonian, various “Teaching American History” programs, and a wide range of theater companies, films, museums, libraries, and foundations. He has served on governing boards of the American Council of Learned Societies, Association of American Colleges and Universities, Center for Research Libraries, National Humanities Alliance, Vivian G. Harsh Society, and Chicago Metro History Education Center. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 78–81. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.78 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation James R. Grossman; A Letter from the American Historical Association to California’s Placentia–Yorba Linda Unified School District. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 78–81. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.78 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search In January 2022, the American Historical Association (AHA) sent a letter to the leadership of the Placentia–Yorba Linda Unified School District (California) opposing a proposed Resolution No. 21–12, “Resolution Opposing the Teaching of Critical Race Theory” (see the proposed resolution at https://4.files.edl.io/e3c9/11/22/21/155531-39d91aa4-c235-4949-a1f4-153f76aa17e8.pdf). We were alerted to this agenda item by a resident concerned about censorship and the quality of history education. We immediately noticed that its text resembled bills being introduced in many state legislatures; the AHA had already begun writing letters to members of those legislatures (for the AHA’s list of letters, organized by state—at this writing, eighteen states—see https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/teaching-history-with-integrity/freedom-to-learn). In this particular letter the AHA noted that “the proposal singled out one set of ideas—critical race theory—as a subject that cannot be taught in Placentia–Yorba Linda schools. The letter includes a link to a statement criticizing similar legislative efforts to restrict education about racism in American... You do not currently have access to this content.

Report of the President of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study

Report of the President of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study

Frederick Douglas Kelly Jr. (1934–2022)

Frederick Douglas Kelly Jr. (1934–2022) Wendy Pfeffer Douglas Kelly, the University of Wisconsin's Julian Harris Professor of Medieval French Emeritus, died on the morning of March 21, 2022 at the age of 87. In an email, Keith Busby described his late colleague as "one of the great medieval scholars of his generation." Kelly's research was devoted particularly to the topics of rhetoric and romance narrative of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Underlying all of his work is the notion that vernacular poetics were grounded in the Latin arts of poetry. Busby's encomium continued, "He was a great scholar and teacher and the best of men." Douglas received his BA, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Southern California (1956), his MA (1959) and Ph.D. (1962) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Once in Madison, he never left—he taught French, Italian, medieval Occitan, and Medieval Studies there for forty-three years, leaving teaching as professor emeritus. In an email, Julia Nephew, a former student, called Douglas "an inspiring and empathetic mentor." In a different email, Suzanne Hagedorn spoke of Douglas's "unfailingly gracious presence, his insightful comments on conference papers, his erudition and kindness." Among his many honors, we can list: Fellow of the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin; Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America; and senior fellow for the Netherland Institute for Advanced Study. Douglas was a recipient of two significant University of Wisconsin recognitions: the Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award and the Hilldale Award for the Humanities. The French branch of the Société internationale arthurienne awarded him its Prix Excalibur in 1995. Over the course of his career, Douglas received extramural grant funding from Phi Beta Kappa, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I knew him as a welcoming, warm, and humble individual, open to ideas from all sides, ever inquisitive. My last interaction with Douglas was in 2019, at Kalamazoo, where he regretted simply [End Page 277] that he was perhaps getting too old to participate as actively in the congress as he would have liked. Though Douglas was better known as an Old French scholar, Occitan literature did not escape his purview. He was a long-standing member of the Société Guilhem IX. He discussed Flamenca in his important book Medieval Imagination; considered Flamenca and Jaufre in "Exaggeration, Abrupt Conversion, and the Uses of Description"; included Raimon Vidal de Besalù in The Arts of Poetry and Prose; and examined fourteenth-century lyric poets At de Mons and Raimon de Cornet in "The Late Medieval Art of Poetry" and again in "Translatio Poetriae." He was also the man responsible for Occitan as an area editor for Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies. It is a sad day when a great scholar and a genuinely warm human being leaves our company. He will be missed. Wendy Pfeffer University of Louisville University of Pennsylvania OCCITAN-RELATED WORKS CITED Kelly, Douglas. The Arts of Poetry and Prose. Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental 59. Turnhout: Brepols, 1991. Google Scholar ———. "Exaggeration, Abrupt Conversion, and the Uses of Description in Jaufre and Flamenca." In Studia occitanica in memoriam Paul Remy. Edited by Hans-Erich Keller et al. 2 vols. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987. 2: 107–119. Google Scholar ———. "The Late Medieval Art of Poetry: The Evidence from At de Mons and Raimon de Cornet." In Études de langue et de littérature médiévales offertes à Peter T. Ricketts. Edited by Dominique Billy and Ann Buckley. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. 681–692. Google Scholar ———. Medieval Imagination: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Courtly Love. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. Google Scholar ———. "Translatio Poetriae: Occitan Apprenticeship from the Latin Classroom to the Vernacular Court." In Le Poetriae del medioevo latino: Modelli, fortuna, commenti. Edited by Gian Carlo Alessio and Domenico Losappio. Filologie medievali e moderne 15. Venice: Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2018. 91–128. Google Scholar Copyright © 2023 Société Guilhem IX ...

Foreword

Foreword Tamara Sonn (bio) The articles in this issue of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs focus on civil society discourse and its implications for international affairs. The academic field of International Relations, reflecting its modernist origins, is state-centered; it focuses primarily on relations between political and military entities, with economic interests always a central focus and non-governmental institutions at the margins. Civil society discourse—whether expressed through the arts, religious, or secular organizations—have yet to find a place in the standard IR curriculum, leaving students ill-equipped to recognize social discontent and its potential political impacts. Clear examples of the analytic weakness of the traditional approach can be seen in the failure of the foreign policy establishment to recognize the long-standing social grievances that resulted in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union, and the 2010–11 Arab Spring. These weaknesses have been noticed. CIA Director Stansfield Turner wrote in 1991 of the failure to foresee that the United States would have to intervene militarily in Iran, Libya, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon and Kuwait during the previous decade.1 Regarding the Arab democracy uprisings, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2011, "We're facing an Arab awakening that nobody could have imagined and few predicted just a few years ago."2 Michael Walzer reflects on the secular bias of IR and therefore incomprehension of the rise of political Islam in his 2015 The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions. Yet portents of these and many other developments over the past century were clearly evident in the discourse of religious and other civil society actors and in the works of poets, fiction writers, playwrights, and musicians. Students trained to analyze the popular sentiments expressed in these discourses could contribute to more comprehensive intelligence gathering. They might even recognize that traditional foreign policy strategies actually contribute to destabilizing social unrest. For example, according to emeritus Georgetown Professor of Government and International Affairs Robert Lieber, "maintaining a secure supply of oil from the Middle East and the Persian Gulf" is essential to our national interest—even if it means compromising our commitment to democracy.3 Georgetown Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy Dennis Ross recently argued in support of strengthening U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia despite the state-sanctioned murder of journalist Jamal [End Page 145] Khashoggi "and other human rights violations." In order to secure the free flow of "Saudi oil," we need to "do what we have always done:… balance values and interests."4 This approach is what drove the United States to participate in the overthrow of Iran's developing democracy in 1953, contributing to the anti-Americanism that drove the 1979 revolution and remains a potent threat today. Given the vested interests, it is unlikely that U.S. foreign policy training will change significantly in the near term. But the articles in this volume provide good examples of the kinds of analyses that would help inform more comprehensive understandings of international affairs. They include studies of the manipulation of religious conservatism by rightwing politicians in Brazil, and the political exploitation of disaffected young males radicalized online in South Korea; and the weaknesses (and, by implication, inconsistencies) of economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool in China; and the potential strengths of civil society activism in Yemen. Other articles deal with national issues that have important transnational resonances, such as the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on indigenous communities in Latin America. Tamara Sonn Tamara Sonn is Professor Emerita at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her most recent books include Islam and Democracy After the Arab Spring (with John L. Esposito and John O. Voll; Oxford, 2016), Islam: History, Religion, and Politics (Wiley Blackwell, 2016), and Is Islam an Enemy of the West? (Polity, 2016). She has published over one hundred chapters and articles, and her works have been translated into Arabic, Bengali, German, Portuguese, Korean, and Russian. She has lectured in North America, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright, and the U.S. Department of State...

Kyra Markham: Letters to Louis Sheaffer (1962–63)

Kyra Markham: Letters to Louis Sheaffer (1962–63)

How international humanitarian law develops: Towards an ever-greater humanization? An interview with Theodor Meron

Theodor Meron has been a Judge and, between March 2012 and January 2019, was the President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (the Mechanism). He was also a Judge of the Appeals Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from November 2011 until the closure of those tribunals. He served a total of four terms as President of the ICTY and three terms as President of the Mechanism. A leading scholar of international humanitarian law, human rights and international criminal law, Judge Meron is the author of thirteen books on international law and chivalry in Shakespeare and more than 100 articles, including some of the books and articles that helped build the legal foundations for the international criminal tribunals. His most recent book is Standing up for Justice (Oxford University Press, 2021).He is a member of the Institute of International Law and of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous awards, honours and medals, such as the Hudson Medal (American Society of International Law) and the Haskins Prize (American Council of Learned Societies). He is also an Officer of the French Legion of Honour, Grand Officer of the French National Order of Merit, Officer of the Order of Merit of Poland and Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (United Kingdom). A past honorary President of the American Society of International Law and past Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law and Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, he is Charles L. Denison Professor of Law Emeritus at NYU Law School and, since 2014, a Visiting Professor of Law at Oxford University. He is a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College, an Academic Associate of the Bonavero Human Rights Institute and an Honorary Fellow at Trinity College.

ACLS and the Promotion of Chinese Studies in the United States, 1928–1958


 
 
 This essay recounts the early history of the development of Chinese studies in the United States undertaken by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), starting in 1928 under the leadership of its newly appointed Assistant Secretary, Mortimer Graves, in collaboration with key members of the American Oriental Society. Through planning conferences, surveys, and reports, he ascertained the needs of the field and secured funding to meet them. These included seed money for faculty positions, fellowships for graduate students and scholars, programs to spark interest in Asian studies curricula, the creation of bibliographical and journal resources and a new scholarly society, and the development of intensive language training methods. Subsequent philanthropic and government support continued this trajectory, but Graves’s thirty-year campaign succeeded in laying the foundation for the field as we know it today.
 
 

Oplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy. Volume 2, The Decorations: Painting, Stucco, Pavements, Sculptures Edited by John R. Clarke and Nayla K. Muntasser (ACLS Humanities E-Book). New York: American Council of Learned Societies 2019. Reflowable; approx. 1, 594 pp. Open access at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.90048. ISBN 9781628201383 (e-book).

<i>Oplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy. Volume 2, The Decorations: Painting, Stucco, Pavements, Sculptures</i> Edited by John R. Clarke and Nayla K. Muntasser (ACLS Humanities E-Book). New York: American Council of Learned Societies 2019. Reflowable; approx. 1, 594 pp. Open access at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.90048. ISBN 9781628201383 (e-book).

News, Programs, Publications, and Awards

News, Programs, Publications, and Awards

Guest Editor's and Editor's Notes

Guest Editor's and Editor's Notes Katherine Grandjean (bio) and Marion Rust I confess I have no idea how to write this note. It is January 2021. Two days ago, I learned of the death of Sarah Schuetze. She was a gifted scholar and teacher, much beloved by many people. But she was much more than that, to me. She was my friend, my guide, my sister. We met as fellows at American Antiquarian Society. I loved her immediately. She was funny and warm and snarky. She took notes by hand, in fat spiral notebooks. We sat across from each other in the reading room for months, interrupting each other, passing notes. "Finding a new friend is so funny," she said to me once. "It's kind of like falling in love." And it was. Her work was about disease, and she could tell you gnarly things about syphilis and typhoid and scurvy. She loved writing. She wrote expansively and fearlessly. She wrote long meditations on things, on texts, confident that she would find the way, and she usually did. She gave excellent advice. She listened endlessly to my research dilemmas, and she generally had very little patience for my insecurities, which helped me, always. This issue was her idea. When she told me she wanted to do this, and that she wanted me to coedit with her, I was reluctant. I knew it would be a lot of work. But Sarah's enthusiasm for things was irresistible. She liked to try new projects. Building things. Planting roses. Layer cakes from scratch. She took things on wholeheartedly, without betraying an ounce of reservation. She once threw herself a raccoon baby shower, to collect necessaries for the baby raccoons she was fostering. There was even a registry. So I said yes. And it was not easy. But this issue is a testament to her and to our friendship. It is surreal to think that she won't see it in print. The past year has been full of disruption and shock. But her death, to me, is the cruelest interruption of all. Words fail. [End Page 1] I am grateful to Sarah Schuetze, Katherine Grandjean, Linda Coombs, and the many anonymous readers who made this special issue possible. And with this first issue of the calendar year, thanks are due to several EAL editorial board members who conclude their five-year terms with volume 55: Matt Cohen (University of Nebraska–Lincoln), Paul Downes (University of Toronto), Gene Andrew Jarrett (New York University), Meredith Neuman (Clark University), and Christopher Phillips (Lafayette College). As a field, we owe you a debt of gratitude for your acumen and your generosity of spirit. I would also like to welcome our new board members: Wendy Bellion (University of Delaware), Lisa Brooks (Amherst College), Sarah Chinn (Hunter College, CUNY), Andrew Newman (Stony Brook University), and Derrick Spires (Cornell University). Thank you in advance for the unique contributions each of you are prepared to make. I look forward to working with you. [End Page 2] Katherine Grandjean katherine grandjean is an associate professor of history at Wellesley College. She is the author of American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England (Harvard UP, 2015). Her essays have appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly, American Quarterly, and Early American Studies, and her work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and others. She is currently working on a new book about the violent legacies of the American Revolution. Copyright © 2021 The University of North Carolina Press

Melodic Language and Linguistic Melodies: Text Setting in Igbo

There are no other sense-altering aspects of culture that equate with language’s effect on aural perception (hearing). Increased sensitivity to pitch is a cognitive characteristic in the 60% of the world’s ethnolinguistic cultures that speak tone languages (Yip 2002). Lexical tone is a pitch contrast akin to the contour of a melody that distinguishes between words. An example is [íké] (high-high, like a repeated note) and [íkè] (high-low, like a falling interval) which forms a minimal pair between the Ìgbò words for strength and buttocks. Being a tone language speaker also impacts ways of musicking, especially singing. This is the case in sub-Saharan Africa, where “language and music are tied, as if by an umbilical cord” (Agawu 2016:113). A favorite tool for evangelism among 19th- and 20th-century European missionaries in West Africa was to translate European hymn texts into the language of the missionized and teach them to sing the translation to the original hymn tune. An example included in the video is “All hail the power of Jesus’ name” which is often sung to the Coronation hymn tune by Oliver Holden (1792). Unfortunately, early missionaries would translate the texts metrically (to preserve the number of syllables) but had no understanding of the necessary tone. Because of the link between lyrics and melody in tone languages, composers of vocal music in tone languages have argued that one should not compose vocal music in isolation from text or vice-versa. In 1974, Laz Ekwueme, a doctoral advisee of Allen Forte, published an article on Ìgbò text setting and harmonization. In addition to parallel harmony, Ekwueme recommends staggering text (as in European polyphony or African call-and-response) and using alliterative sounds (vocables and onomatopoeia) in subordinate voices. Drawing on field recordings gathered in Nigeria from 2011–2020 by the authors, and commentary by Ekwueme and Dr. Christian Onyeji, this SMT-V article studies the phenomenon of “tone-and-tune” in Ìgbò culture. Compositions by Laz Èkwúèmé, Sam Òjúkwū, Christian Ònyéji, Joshua Úzọ̀ígwē Commentary by Laz Èkwúèmé, Christian Ònyéjì Performances by Ogene Uzodinma, Laz Ekwueme Chorale, Agbani-Nguru Ikorodo, Lagos City Chorale, Elizabeth Ime Ònyéjì, University of Lagos Choir, Morehouse College Glee Club Video scores by Ebruphiyor Omodoro Field recordings and interviews are provided by the Africana Digital Ethnography Project (ADEPt), with support from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Fulbright Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

ASECS at 50: Interview with Lynn Hunt

ASECS at 50:Interview with Lynn Hunt Katie Jarvis (bio) and Lynn Hunt Lynn Hunt is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since earning her Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 1973, Hunt has written, co-authored, and edited numerous works on French history, gender history, global history, and the history of human rights. She is widely known for her ground-breaking book Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (1984) and for her continual engagement with new theories and methods. Her most recent book, History: Why it Matters (2018), analyzes truth in history and asks what role the discipline should have in contemporary society. Hunt has served as President of the American Historical Association and has sat on the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies. Her research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She received the Nancy Lyman Roelker Graduate Mentorship Award from the American Historical Association in 2010. Katie Jarvis: ASECS began in 1969 while you were in graduate school. From your perspective, what are the most significant ways that ASECS has since changed, and how has the society impacted eighteenth-century studies? Lynn Hunt: I cannot think of a more thriving interdisciplinary society or one that has had more impact on interdisciplinary studies. The reach of ASECS has expanded greatly with the establishment of many regional societies and through its affiliation with ISECS, the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. ASECS not [End Page 547] only gave a home to scholars who crossed disciplinary boundaries (and who were therefore sometimes regarded as not quite true to their disciplines); it encouraged many of us to think in more interdisciplinary ways. In my own field of history, this prompting has had many salutary effects because when I was a graduate student some fifty years ago, historians did not consider literature, theater, or art to be historical documents that might have as much significance as police records or diplomatic correspondence. As a consequence, eighteenth-century studies have been at the forefront of new developments in many different humanities disciplines. Jarvis: What ASECS conferences, articles, journal volumes, or other initiatives stand out in your memory? Hunt: I do not think so much in terms of specific conferences or publications, but rather of the growing interest in gender and the impact of slavery and other forms of global connection which appeared very early on in ASECS conferences and in the pages of Eighteenth-Century Studies. Jarvis: Over the past four decades, what trends in eighteenth-century studies have you found the most invigorating? Hunt: The insistence on considering gender relations, the impact of slavery and race more generally, and the effects of global interconnection (especially empire and colonization) have influenced every field in the humanities. These interests have meant that scholars in literature and art history have become much more interested in historical context but these interests have also changed the way historians think of their field. It is hard to overstate the influence of these interests on the way we currently think about eighteenth-century studies. We now take them for granted, but often a long struggle was required to get them accepted as valid subjects of scholarship and therefore of interdisciplinary inquiry. ASECS played a key role in making this happen. Jarvis: What questions remain under-explored in eighteenth-century studies? Which current topics or questions hold great potential for our field? Hunt: Human-animal relations and environmental questions are just coming into their own now and they will have an influence for many years to come, and the interest in gender, race, and global interactions is certainly not about to dissipate. But given how interests shift over time, scholars may well return to some traditional fields with new approaches and questions. Diplomatic history, for example, has been transformed not just by the interest in global connections but also by gender and race. The role of women in diplomatic affairs in the eighteenth century has long been obscured by the relentless focus on official documents and records of leading male participants. Now scholars are discovering...

ASECS at 50: Interview with Felicity Nussbaum

ASECS at 50:Interview with Felicity Nussbaum Shirley F. Tung (bio) and Felicity Nussbaum Felicity Nussbaum is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, renowned for her work on gender, life writing, theater and performance, disability, race, empire, and globalism in the long eighteenth century. She is the author of Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theater (2010); The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century (2003); Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives (1995); The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England (1989), which was co-recipient of the Gottschalk Prize; and "The Brink of All We Hate": English Satires on Women, 1660–1750 (1984). Most recently, her contributions to widening the field of eighteenth-century studies as editor of The Global Eighteenth Century (2003) was commemorated by a WSECS 2019 conference devoted to global scholarship. In addition, as co-editor of The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West (2008) with Saree Makdisi, Defects: Engendering the Modern Body (2000) with Helen Deutsch, and The New Eighteenth Century: Theory/Politics/English Literature (1987) with Laura Brown, respectively, Professor Nussbaum was instrumental in integrating work on Orientalism, disability studies, and critical theory into the purview of the eighteenth century. Professor Nussbaum is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including Guggenheim, Mellon, and NEH fellowships. She has also held a Marta Sutton Weeks Fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center, and a Rockefeller Humanist-in-Residence Fellowship at the Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers University. Committed to advancing the field of eighteenth-century studies, Professor Nussbaum served on the ASECS Executive Board from 1978–1981, as [End Page 369] Vice President from 2004–2006, and as President from 2006–2007. Her dedication to her students and to fostering the next generation of eighteenth-century scholars has been recognized by the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award with Distinction in Graduate Teaching (2014) and the inaugural ASECS Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentorship (2007–2008). In her own classroom, Professor Nussbaum introduces The Life of Johnson (1791) to her uninitiated graduate students with James Boswell's appraisal that the literal weight of his book equals the figurative weight of his biographical subject. Here, the reader will find quite the opposite: the weight of Professor Nussbaum's scholarship and the measure of her influence on the field of eighteenth-century studies are not bound up in so-called "marginal stuffings." Rather, her legacy as a scholar, educator, and mentor is vested in her gift for abridging her compendious knowledge and experience for those who wish to travel the trail that she has blazed. Shirley F. Tung: What are your most noteworthy recollections of ASECS? How has the organization influenced the direction of eighteenth-century studies? Felicity Nussbaum: I remember ASECS near its beginning in 1969. I first learned about the Society around 1974 when, as a William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Fellow, I was preparing to move to Syracuse University for an assistant professor position. A number of people at the Clark Library mentioned to me that they were planning to attend ASECS. Soon after, I gave my first ASECS paper on women and satire. At the time there were not very many women in the field of eighteenth-century studies. Responding to the beginning of a new wave of feminism, many scholars at the Society encouraged me in the profession, and I was very lucky to become one of the at-large members of the Executive Board early on in my career. Being an Executive Board Member was quite important for me because I was able to meet and speak with influential scholars who encouraged my work, such as Patricia Meyer Spacks, who was at Yale at the time. I was very active in ASECS and was offered the position of delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), which meant I went to New York City twice a year for their meetings (I was already living in Upstate New York). As an ACLS delegate, I met people from all different learned societies and was able to see the ways...

The Value of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Humanities E-Book Collection: Is It Worth the Cost?

The Value of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Humanities E-Book Collection: Is It Worth the Cost?

William (Bill) Calin (1936-2018)

William (Bill) Calin (1936-2018) F. Regina Psaki William Compaine Calin died on May 20, 2018 at Lake City Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida at the age of 82. Bill Calin was born on April 4, 1936, in Newington, Connecticut, only child of Isadore ("Jack") Calin and Nettie Compaine, originally from Romania and Russia. Bill often described his parents as committed communists; their son, as some apples do, rolled as far from the tree as possible. Bill loved talking politics; he relished disagreement and debate, and never saw any reason for such conversations to become aggressive or divisive. He deplored the factionalism that has riven American politics and the disappearance of the concept of "loyal opposition." If Bill could have bottled his gift for lively yet friendly—even affectionate—political wrangling, he'd have made a fortune, and the entire polity would have been the better for it. Click for larger view View full resolution Bill in 1963 (Guggenheim archives) Click for larger view View full resolution Bill in May, 2017 (photo by Kathryn Klingebiel) Bill studied in Paris during his junior year in college. There he fell in love with French Romanesque and Gothic architecture, which led him to his research and teaching specialities of medieval French and Occitan literature and culture—as well as to middle English and, later, to modern Occitan, Breton, and lowland Scots. His published obituary noted that "While he published more in one lifetime than many could do in five, his creative and analytical energies would have taken five lifetimes to exhaust." This is no exaggeration, and no short tribute can do justice to the variety and copia of his publications. Fully 25% of [End Page 224] his published articles are dedicated to Occitan; this tribute will highlight some of his Occitan professional activities. Bill took his undergraduate degree at Yale College (1957) and his Ph.D. from Yale University (1960). From then on, in his teaching and writing alike, he communicated both his knowledge and his love of the rich contributions that France has made to world culture. He taught at Dartmouth, Stanford, the University of Oregon, and, since 1988, the University of Florida, as Graduate Research Professor in French Literature. He was a visiting professor at academic institutions in North America and Europe and delivered 230 conference papers and invited lectures. A quintessential teacher and researcher, Bill won eleven major grants from national and/or international scholarly organizations, including the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He was an International Vice President of the Association Internationale d'Études Occitanes (1993-2002). He was on the editorial board of numerous journals, including Tenso, and served in many international organizations, such as the Centre international de l'écrit en occitan (1996 until his death) and the MLA Division of Provençal and Catalan. He was proud to have been elected a Sòci dóu Felibrige in 1993. Bill published twelve books covering a broad range of French literature, from the earliest epics of France, through the lyric production of poets such as Guillaume de Machaut, to modernity and medievalism. His expertise also included the so-called 'minority' languages and literatures of the British Isles and France, on the one hand, and the ways in which the modern world imagines, studies, and understands the Middle Ages, on the other. His later books include The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England; Minority Literatures and Modernism: Scots, Breton, and Occitan, 1920-1990; The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics: From Spitzer to Frye; and The Lily and the Thistle: The French Tradition and the Older Literature of Scotland; Essays in Criticism. In addition, Bill published over 120 articles and book chapters on many topics (see below for those on Occitan) and reviewed [End Page 225] 27 books in learned journals. His last Occitan essay appeared in Spring 2018 in this journal, a fitting conclusion to his career as an occitaniste. Bill was twice married and remained dear friends with his former wives. Though he had no children or siblings, he is survived by many whom he called "academic daughters and sons," whom he mentored...

Assist

Assist Mira Rosenthal (bio) "How can I be of help?" asks my grandmotheralways, and it's so feminine, American, the bargain we strike with our smiles, the optimistic rudderof our native name: we can and are able, we garden, we prospect, we gamble hope. Only there is no curefor the way her mouth hangs open now, no more jargon on her lips, no more forming thought with the purrof words. We moisten her tongue as it hardens a bit more with each breath. I say what I needto say beside her, then the stretch of skin tight around her teeth ceases. The intervals grow long.No more trying to read even the briefest lead tugging at the corners. My mother mumbles, "It's all right."But not yet, I can't, I'm unable to take up the song. [End Page 97] Mira Rosenthal Mira Rosenthal, a past fellow of the nea and Stanford University's Stegner Program, publishes work regularly in such journals as Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, A Public Space, and the Oxford American. Her first book of poems, The Local World, received the Wick Poetry Prize. Her second book of translations, Polish poet Tomasz Różycki's Colonies, won the Northern California Book Award and was shortlisted for numerous other prizes, including the International Griffin Poetry Prize. Her honors include the pen Translation Fund Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. She teaches in Cal Poly's creative writing program. Copyright © 2018 University of Nebraska Press