President’s Message: 2020
Please see below an address to the membership of the K-SAA from the K-SAA President, Prof. Neil Fraistat.
To find out how to join the K-SAA, please click here. Your dues will help sponsor the Association’s expanding docket of activities, including the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr., Research Grants, Distinguished Scholar Awards and Dinner (2021 booking link here!), Mentoring Program, Romantics 200 events, Curran Symposia, and the Keats-Shelley Journal. Please feel free to contact Robert Hartley, K-SAA Treasurer, regarding membership matters at ksaa.treasurer@gmail.com or by U.S. mail at the Association’s address.
The message below will bring you up to date on all our initiatives, including the 2020 volume of the Keats-Shelley Journal, with a special feature on “50 Voices,” our Anti-Racism roundtable that was just posted to our website last week, our ongoing support for early career scholars, our strategic plan, our K-SAA Blog, and our continued social media outreach. There’s a lot going on, and we hope it will inspire your participation and support.
KEATS-SHELLEY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, Inc. ROOM 226,
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 476 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK, NY 10018-2788
10 December 2020
Dear K-SAA Members,
On behalf of our Board members, I wish you warm holiday greetings in this most unusual of years and hope that you and your families are healthy and safe. As is customary, I will highlight here some of the activities undertaken by K-SAA during the past year and ask you to continue the support and engagement that have made them possible, beginning with renewing your membership and joining us at our Annual Awards Celebration. Now more than ever it is valuable for us to come together as a community and to celebrate those whose work and thought have made our own richer. Our celebration will take place on Zoom during MLA on Saturday, January 9, beginning at 6:30 (Eastern Time). You can register for this always convivial event here. Please do join us to honor our newest Distinguished Scholars, Angela Esterhammer and Orrin N. C. Wang; our Essay Prize winner, Jessica Roberson, with honorable mention to Mina Gorji; and our Pforzheimer Grants winners, Bysshe Coffey and Leila Walker. There will also be an opportunity to celebrate the publication of Jonathan Mulrooney’s first issue as Editor of the Keats-Shelley Journal, which is composed of 50 flash essays about the present and future of Romanticism. MLA membership is not required for this ceremony. We especially encourage you to spread word about this virtual event to others who might be interested in attending. We promise a few surprises, along with laughter (and perhaps some tears). We also hope that you will attend virtually our upcoming MLA session, #488 “Public Romanticisms,” organized by Lindsey Eckert and Brittany Pladek, with presenters Leila Walker, Lissette Lopez Szwydky, and Travis Lau, which will be held on Saturday 9 January, 3:30-4:45. A full list of Romanticism-related panels at MLA will be circulated on our website, blog, and social media feeds by the 2020/21 K-SAA Communication Fellows, Mariam Wassif and Amy Wilcockson, along with Director of Communications Anna Mercer. Our hard-working Communications team has been spreading the word about K-SAA initiatives through social media and such vehicles as the K-SAA Blog, which contains interviews and conference summaries, highlights content from the Keats-Shelley Journal, and includes such running series as “Rethinking Romanticism,” and “What Are You Reading?.”
We are launching a new special series that investigates from multiple perspectives Romantic-era responses to the long history of slavery, empire, and colonialism, as well as how those responses have been explored and interrogated in the contemporary academy. We’re also planning on initiating a “teaching link” on these matters to provide inspiration and practical materials. Despite disruptions caused by the Covid crisis, we continue to develop a dynamic series of programs for both academic and public audiences, including the first part of a two-part virtual roundtable: “Towards an Anti-Racist, ‘Undisciplined’ Romanticism,” with Conny Cassity, Nikki Hessell, Debbie Lee, Atesede Makonnen, Omar F. Miranda, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Emily Sun, and Orrin N. C. Wang, organized by Andrew Burkett and David Sigler. A recording of that first session can be found here. Our 2020 annual Curran Symposium, “1820: Aesthetics, Politics, and Legacies of Romanticism,” with its focus on the 1820 volumes of Keats and Shelley, was postponed this past year but will be held in Cambridge, MA on 29 October 2021, along with a special exhibit at the Houghton Library. Look for more soon on that symposium and about our next Curran Symposium, which will be held in New York during Spring 2022, and convened by Eric Eisner, Olivia Moy, and Ann Rowland. These symposia continue to be co-sponsored by our deeply valued partners, the Byron Society of America. Meanwhile, our Board is on the cusp of completing an extensive strategic process, charting the future of K-SAA, with a focus on Communications, High School Outreach, Administration, Membership, and Diversity. We’re excited to share our plans for new, creative programming and outreach at our upcoming May membership meeting. We hope also to develop news ways to add to our already extensive support for early career members of the profession, beyond our Pforzheimer Grants, Buice Travel Funds, and Mentoring Program. A handsome bequest from the estate of Donald H. Reiman, for which we are deeply grateful, will help support some of these activities, but ultimately, we depend upon you. We hope that you will be willing to renew your membership and encourage others to join us. You will notice that one feature of our website is a way for donations to be made. Perhaps you’ll also consider putting us on your holiday gift list!
With best wishes,
Neil Fraistat
President, Keats-Shelley Association of America