ACIS -- Marquette,
President Gillespie
called the meeting to order at
Present:Michael
Gillespie, David Gardiner, Monica Brennan, John Harrington, Fitz Smith,
Philip Freeman, Jim Rogers (ex officio), Ed Madden, Bob Savage,
Margot Backus, Nancy Curtin, Tim Meagher, Charlotte Headrick, Kathryn Conrad.
I.Officers’
reports
President:
Michael Gillespie thanked the officers and the executive as a whole for
their work over the past year.
Vice-President:John
Harrington reported on the Book Prizes.The
recommendations from Miller's report have been realized in this year's
solicitation process; and over the next year or two,the
committees will have a better sense of the cycle of journal schedules for
the publication of announcements.The
question was raised whether ACIS should invest in paid advertisements to
help solicit more submissions.Gillespie
suggested that if the chairs of any of the book prize committees would
like to place an advertisement, they should do so and submit the receipts
to the Treasurer.
Harrington also reported
on the possibilities for future sites of the ACIS national, and encouraged
everyone actively to solicit sites.The
site for 2004 and 2005 are not yet decided.Offers
and suggestions already proferred: Michael Kennealy has suggested a joint
CAIS/ACIS conference; Neil Sammells has suggested a meeting at Bath Spa,
jointly with the British Studies meeting; Jim Doan has suggested an ACIS
scheduled directly before or after the IASIL meeting, in Galway or at another
Irish site. Gillespie encouraged everyone to consider a variety of sites,
particularly in places in which the organization has not yet or recently
met (South, West Coast, etc).
Secretary:
Katie Conrad encouraged members of the executive to examine their listings
in the Guide to Irish Studies in the
Treasurer: David
Gardiner thanked the officers and provided the end of year fiscal report.
·(Summary:
) Gardiner presented the proposed budget.He
noted that ACIS resources have increased, despite the drop in our stock
holdings.He reported that the member
database was trimmed after he sent a first-class mailing and received hundreds
of dead letters with no forwarding addresses.After
the purge of expired memberships (Approximately 400 members), we are actually
back to 1200 members in good standing.Gardiner
stressed the necessity of regularizing the renewal process.
·Gardiner
raised the question of whether we should consider moving our Smith Barney
account from a mutual fund to a safer money market account. Michael suggested
that the last year was an unusual one for the markets and suggested that
we not move precipitously.Conrad
suggested examining the rest of the history of the account’s performance
before making any changes.Curtin
asked where the budget surplus goes; Gardiner replied that our surplus
goes to our Geddes Savings and Loan account.
·Curtin
brought attention to the increased expenditures on the AHA meeting.Savage
explained that the ACIS/AHA part was held on site, in the program, and
thus cost more than the allotted amount.Curtin
and Meagher suggested that such a format increases ACIS exposure at the
AHA and might thus justify an increased expenditure for the AHA and MLA
gatherings. Curtin suggested a budget line of $1000/each. Gillespie suggested
that the executive approve this budget, allow the History and Literature
representatives check on the costs, and then, if necessary, go into cybersession
to approve new budget.
Motion: To approve
the Treasurer’s Report.
Motion approved, seconded.Motion
approved unanimously.
·Gardiner
presented a detailed proposal for outsourcing the maintenance of the membership
list to Priority Data Systems.Such
a move would ensure regularity, professionalism, and consistency of the
lists, and the costs were well within the Treasurer’s current budget.The
renewals would still come in to the Treasurer, who would "batch" renewals
for processing by Priority.One benefit
would be regularizing the renewal dates.The
Executive approved of the move.Harrington
suggested that perhaps the Treasurer should outsource even more, especially
dues collection. Gillespie encouraged further examination of the possibility
of outsourcing dues collection.
Regional Representatives
MidAtlantic:Monica
Brennan present.No report.
South:Ed
Madden: The next ACIS Southern meeting will be at the
University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.The
theme will be “Modern Ireland and the Persistence of Memory.”
West:Charlotte
Headrick reported for Nora McGuinness.
[See http://www.acisweb.com/cfp.html
for conference information]
Discipline Representatives
Arts
(Headrick), Celtic Studies (Freeman),
History (Savage), and
Social Science (Meagher) representatives reported that they were
in the process of reading submissions for book prizes.
The Irish Language
representative was not present, due to an Aer Lingus flight delay.
Literature:
Margot Backus reported that the ACI/MLA party was organized jointly with
the Joyce foundation; Gillespie reported it as successful.She
also reported that her committee is reading for the book prize.There
will be two ACIS panels for next year’s MLA: "
Graduate representative. Fitz
Smith; no report.
II. Old Business
A.Election
Committee (See below, *)
Motion:To
accept Election Report.
Moved, seconded.Motion
passed unanimously.
B. Nominating Committee:
John Harrington proposed
that he,Katie
Conrad and Jim MacKillop will comprise the Nominations Committee.
Motion: To accept
the proposed Nominating Committee.
Moved, seconded.Motion
passed unanimously.
Harrington encouraged
everyone to solicit nominations for the next election cycle.
III. New Business
A. History Report
(See below, **)
If Report approved,
the membership will approve the $5000.
Motion
to approve the Report of the Ad Hoc Committee to Recommend a New ACIS History.
Motion approved,
seconded.Motion approved unanimously.
B.ACIS
2003
James Rogers reported
on the progress of next year's meeting. [see http://www.acisweb.com/cfp.html];
he recommended that members start thinking now about panels and encouraged
that disciplines not often represented be solicited for submissions.
Backus suggested a
return of the living book review, which was successful and met with general
approval.
The meeting was adjourned
at
Respectfully submitted,
Kathryn Conrad
*Election Statement
for the Executive Meeting:
Currently, fees for Joint Memberships (termed "couples" on the membershiprenewal
form) are $35 per year, and Memberships are $30 per year. The intention
apparently was to control printing costs by avoiding duplicate
The Treasurer David Gardiner estimates that there are approximately
50 Joint Memberships in ACIS in 2001-2002.
The question has arisen of whether Joint Memberships are entitled to
one or two votes in ACIS elections. The number of votes concerned
is substantial: 50 Joint Memberships, if awarded duplicate votes, represent
The Election Committee recommends that one membership, of whatever kind,
represent one vote in ACIS elections.
John Harrington (Chair)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
At the ACIS Executive Committee meeting on June 9, 2001, PresidentMichael
Gillespie asked the Election Committee (John Harrington, Vice President
and Chair, Nancy Curtin, and Ed Madden), to propose a motion
concerning Joint Memberships in ACIS.
mailings, and so to reflect that organization saving in the discounted
membership fee for a second person.
an additional 50 votes, or a substantial percentage of recent counts
of votes cast. Further, Joint Memberships are poorly defined: they
could be construed to be entitled to more than two members and so more
than two votes.
Nancy Curtin
Ed Madden
**REPORT OF THE
AD HOC COMMITTEE TO RECOMMEND A NEW ACIS HISTORY
BACKGROUND AND
CHRONOLOGY
At the ACIS conference
at Fordham University in June 2001, President Michael Gillespie asked Nancy
Curtin, Larry McCaffrey, Maureen Murphy, and Robert Rhodes (as chair) to
serve as an ad hoc committee to write
a
proposal for a new ACIS history and to report to the Executive Committee
on the committee's deliberations and conclusions.
There have been four
relatively brief previous histories, all by Larry McCaffrey. The first
was for Irish Historical Studies (September 1967); the second appeared
in the Michael Funchion-edited Irish-American Volunteer Organizations (1983);
the next was for The Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 1988); and the last
appeared in The Encyclopedia of the Irish in
On
cover
internal cotroversies ? On 25 June, Gillespie replied succinctly: "I have
no preconceptions about how the history project should be structured,"
a view that Rhodes relayed to committee members on 20 July, adding that
it was a "reply which allows us to go as we think we should" and that from
a conversation with Michael in New York he inferred that a grander history
than earlier ones was the goal.
In the same message
to committee members,
The following day,
the chair reminded committee members of Gillespie's earlier response and
advised them of his most recent reply; he also posed again questions he'd
asked over the summer; and he requested early responses to
the
several items on the table for discussion. With a paucity of responses,
he again requested responses in early December, a message that elicited
discussion among committee members.
DISCUSSION
The first major consideration
was the potential audience for the history. Committee members agreed that,
as one member put it, the history should not be "an internal, family history,"
another saying that "an in-house history"
would
have a limited audience and speculating further that not many ACIS members
"know or care about the organization's history." One committee member opined
that "If someone would write a thorough history of the advance of Irish
Studies over the past four decades, ACIS would get the credit it deserves."
Another concurred: ". ..I would be interested
in the rather heroic rise of Irish Studies in the
On 19 December,
RECOMMENDATIONS
The committee believes
that a narrowly conceived in-house history of ACIS would have a very limited
audience. On the other hand, and considering the significant role ACIS
has played in the development of Irish Studies in the
It should be the responsibility
of the Executive Committee --more specifically, a sub-committee composed
of the Executive Committee's discipline representatives --to conduct a
search for a suitable author, who need not
necessarily
be a professional historian, for the history through notices in the ACIS
Newsletter, the Irish Literary Supplement, ~, the American Historical Review,
and other appropriate outlets. Preferably, the selected
writer
will have substantial personal and professional history of association
with ACIS.
Insofar as possible,
the writer should be assured of the complete cooperation of former and
current ACIS officers, national and regional. ACIS should offer as much
access as possible to its archival resources wherever they're
located,
and should identify individuals and organizations that might have such
materials. Additionally, as one committee member put it, ACIS should "facilitate
when possible contacts with other programs or organizations."
ACIS should agree that
the writer will have control over questions of coverage and characterization;
that ACIS waives any claim to final approval of the manuscript; and that
while ACIS will help in the search for a publisher,
the
author has first and final say on the choice of a publisher. As for material
inducements, the selected writer should receive up to $5,000 to be disbursed
as he/she wishes, e.g., to cover research expenses, as subvention for the
publisher, or simply as compensation. Furthermore, the author should be
assured that financial inducement does not carry with it any claim of approval
of the manuscript.
Finally, the committee
has no specific proposal to make about discounted copies of the published
history for ACIS members, though, of course, it recommends that members
be given some inducement to purchase copies.
ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
In a
linary
mission or has it become just another academic organization [?] Unfortunately,
I believe that it has failed to integrate the various Irish Studies disciplines."
Without addressing
directly the questions asked by Larry, committee members did have some
perceptions about what has or has not happened about "inter-disciplinarianism"
at ACIS conferences. McCaffrey, Murphy, and Rhodes
shared
to different degrees the sense that over the years panels of speakers and
their audiences had grown more specialized, historians, for example, speaking
largely to other historians and sociologists to sociologists
rather
than, as they recalled, speakers of various disciplines speaking to audiences
with varied disciplinary interests, a practice, they believe, that more
completely met the interdisciplinary ideal than specialized sessions.
Nancy Curtin had a
different perspective: When she started attending national conferences
in the mid-1980s, she "found the organization very balkanized
into its little disciplinary enclaves. ...I think that changed dramatically
in
the late 1990s and now ACIS conferences strike me as the very height of
interdiscipliriarity. ...So what some of you regard as deterioration, I
found a stark improvement. I expect an historian of ACIS will note these
varying
generational
responses."
Respectfully submitted,
Nancy Curtin
Larry McCaffrey
Maureen Murphy
Robert Rhodes, Chair