2006-12-30 MLA

Edith Wharton Society Business Meeting at MLA 2006

December 30, 2006

The meeting was called to order at the conclusion of the Edith Wharton session on December 30, 2006, with Donna Campbell presiding.

  1. Carole Shaffer-Koros gave the Treasurer’s Report. The Society has about $30,000 in its accounts and is financially healthy.

  2. The results from the 2006 election for EWS Secretary and Executive Board members were announced. Margaret Murray will be the new Secretary, and the new Board members are Gary Totten, Meredith Goldsmith, Katherine Joslin, and Laura Saltz, who was re-elected.
  3. Linda Costanzo Cahir announced that the winner of the Edith Wharton Essay Prize is Travis M. Foster. About twenty submissions were received for the prize. The winning essay will be published in the Edith Wharton Review.
  4. Margaret Murray reported that planning for the Edith Wharton Society Conference at The Mount is going forward. The conference will be held June 26-29, 2008 at Seven Hills Resort in Lenox, Massachusetts, a site immediately adjacent to The Mount.
  5. Hildegard Hoeller announced that the Edith Wharton Beinecke Awards Program deadline for proposals is March 15, 2007. The program provides $1,500 for research in the Edith Wharton Collection at the Beinecke Library.
  6. The membership was asked to approve a new process for the selection of panel topics at ALA and MLA. The previous system had been to propose topics for the next year’s session at the business meetings at ALA and MLA, but since this could exclude those who could not attend, the Executive Board had proposed the following process:

    1. The Board would solicit topics both at the business meeting and prior to the business meeting (via the web site). Any EWS member can propose a topic.

    2. The EWS will solicit proposals from the membership both at the business meeting and prior to the business meetings.

    3. [Minutes amended 5/19/08 to reflect corrections from those present at the meeting: The EWS Executive Board will consider the proposals and choose the one that will be the topic for the ALA or MLA meeting. The proposer of the winning topic will solicit proposals and chair the session unless he or she is unable to do so.]

This motion passed unanimously.

7. Topics for next year’s MLA panel were solicited. Among those suggested were the following: Free Will and Determinism, The Centenary of The Fruit of the Tree, The Nature of Heroism in Edith Wharton’s Works, Beyond Pro- and Anti-: Edith Wharton’s Racial Politics. The last of these won, and the panel will be chaired by Meredith Goldsmith. Incoming President Hildegard Hoeller will announce her topic in the MLA Newsletter.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Donna Campbell, Secretary pro tem

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