2007 Newsletter

• Conferences • Books • New on the Website • Notes from the Editor •

many thanks to the members who sent news

FEEGI Business

The membership year ends every January. Please submit your membership renewals: Membership Form • Information about Membership

Your dues help allow graduate students to participate in the conference, as well as supporting FEEGI's existence. Membership entitles you to a discounted subscription to Itinerario.

Conference

Thanks to hard work from Marjoleine Kars (program chair), Alison Games (local arrangements), and the rest of the conference committee, our upcoming conference is in great shape. The draft program has already been published. Please plan to join us at Georgetown University in Washington, 21-23 February 2008.

Elections

As usual, elections will be held at the business meeting during the 2008 conference. There will be one big change to FEEGI's administrative structure—assuming that members first approve a change to the constitution, we intend to separate the Secretary-Treasurer position into two separate offices. This will reduce the workload for both board members, as one handles finances while the other oversees the membership. Secretary and Treasurer had previously been individual offices, until the original constitution was revised in 1998.

We'll be sending out a formal call for nominations and self-nominations closer to the conference. Please consider helping maintain FEEGI as a vibrant organization that brings together a wide range of individuals for an exciting conference.

On the Conference Circuit

Upcoming Conferences

AHA 2008: Several FEEGI board members are presenting at the 2008 AHA. Laura Mitchell and Linda Rupert are both on a panel on the Dutch Atlantic; Dayo Nicole Mitchell is presenting with three others on free people of African descent in the Americas; Marjoleine Kars is on a panel on new world slavery and African ethnic identity.

Society for Historical Archaelogy
Hyatt Regency
Albuquerque, NM January 9-13, 2008

California Mission Studies Association
25th Annual Conference
Tumacacori National Historical Park
Tumacacori, AZ February 15-17th, 2008

FEEGI: Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction
Georgetown University
Washington, DC, 21-23 February 2008

Conference Reports

Yucatan Studies in Pennsylvania: On Wednesday, October 24th, Penn State hosted the First Annual Yucatan/Pennsylvania Roundtable. Sponsored by the Latin American Studies Program and the Department of History at Penn State, the one-day event featured participant scholars of Yucatan from colleges and universities within Pennsylvania. Participants included Mark Christensen (Penn State), Spencer Delbridge (Penn State), Paul Eiss (Carnegie Mellon), Shannan Mattiace (Allegheny), Tom Nonnenmacher (Allegheny), Matthew Restall (Penn State), and David Sowell (Juniata). The event was a huge success, and the participants hope to hold the second roundtable next fall at Carnegie Mellon. Yucatecanists in Pennsylvania or adjacent states who would be interested in participating or simply attending are encouraged to contact restall@psu.edu.

—contributed by Matthew Restall

Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD): 9-12 October 2007, in Barbados. The four-day conference, with multiple simultaneous panels, cannot be easily summarized, but it was an invigorating consideration of the meaning of freedom, as a means to commemorate the Anglo-American abolitions of the transatlantic trade in Africans. Plenary sessions included a discussion of the economics of the trade by Selwyn Carrington, William Darity Jr, and Seymour Drescher; a celebration of Bajan writer George Lamming; and a keynote from Hilary Beckles on the case for British reparations. While dominated by historians, the conference was truly interdisciplinary, with political scientists, art historians, literary critics, and even biologists. The business meeting elected a new Director, Abena P. A. Busia (replacing Michael Gomez) and announced that the next biennial conference would be held in Ghana.

—contributed by Dayo Nicole Mitchell

New Books by FEEGI Members

B. R. Burg, Boys at Sea: Sodomy, Indency, and Courts Martial in Nelson's Navy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Douglas Hamilton and Robert J Blyth, eds., Representing slavery: art, artefacts and archives in the collections of the National Maritime Museum (Lund Humphries, 2007).

John B. Hattendorf, editor-in-chief, Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History (Oxford University Press, 2007). Four printed volumes, and a digital version, with contributions from a number of FEEGI members.

Matthew Restall and Florine Asselbergs, eds., Invading Guatemala: Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara and Monica Burguera, eds., Historias de España Contemporánea: Cambio social y giro cultural (University of Valencia, forthcoming). Several of the essays address the history of the Spanish Empire and postcolonial approaches to modern Spanish history.

Book Recommendations from FEEGI Members

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara:

Added to the Webpage

New additions to the Resources pages.

New Page: Textbook Series

This page aims to introduce various thematic series designed for course use, especially primary source readers.

New Page: Recent Publications of Interest

As academic publishing budgets shrink, authors are being asked to help with the publicity. Any new book announcements I receive will be posted on the web. Periodic compilations may be sent to the listserv.

New Opportunities

Publishing: Palgrave McMillan's series in War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850.

Fellowships: the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas–Austin, focusing on a theme of "Global Borders."

Notes from the Editor

The membership actually voted to abolish a paper newsletter back in 2004, in favor of moving to electronic communciation. So I've chosen to do an electronic newsletter rather than a paper one this year, saving my time, FEEGI's money, and the environmental resources required to deliver paper mail. Feel free to email feedback on this or other aspects of communication with the members.

Question for the Membership

What do you want from the listserv? It's been a low-traffic list that focuses on FEEGI business, special opportunities, and selected extremely relevant announcements, but do you want more from it?

Send Suggestions!

Please consider how you can help enhance the Resources that FEEGI offers its members. As always, many thanks to those who did send in news. Feel free to send news and announcements at any time during the year.

If I get recommendations, I can keep a page listing books and articles that are worth checking out. I have added a new page for teaching materials, which, again, is only as useful as FEEGI members make it by sharing suggestions. Throughout the year, I'm happy to add book announcements to the New Books page, whether or not authored by FEEGI members. I'd like to send periodic compilations of such information to the listserv.

I hope that the listings of series where our members might publish, and the centers where you might get funding, are useful. There doesn't seem to be enough information like that collated on the web, so please continue to send additions to the lists. Conference reports are another item it would be nice to share more widely.

Website

Comments, technical problems, and suggestions may be emailed to Dayo Nicole Mitchell, webmaster and FEEGI editor. If linking to the FEEGI website, please use the URL http://feegi.org, which is a permanent forwarding address that will always reach the FEEGI website regardless of the current editor and host.

http://feegi.org/news/news200712.htm