June 2009 Newsletter

June 2009
Volume 32, Number 3

Table of Contents

• Letter from the President
• 2009 Ballot Materials
• Message from the Executive Director
• Board Meeting Minutes
• APA/NEH Fellowship to TLL
• Pearson Fellowship Announcement
• Roundtable Discussion Sessions
• University and College Appointments
• Notice Concerning Dissertation Listings
• Reminder for Organizers of Panels in 2011
• Awards to Members
• Announcements
• Funding Opportunities / Fellowships
• Contact Information for APA Member Services
• Important Dates for APA Members
• Capital Campaign News

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The American Philological Association Newsletter (ISSN 0569-6941) is published six times a year (February, April, June, August, October, December) by the American Philological Association. Send materials for publication; communications on Placement, membership, changes of address; and claims to: Executive Director, American Philological Association, 292 Claudia Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 249 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304. Telephone: 215-898-4975. FAX: 215-573-7874. E-mail: info@classicalstudies.org.

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Letter from the President

Preprints and Open Access Revisited
This is a revised reprint (rather than a preprint!) of my February 2009 President’s Letter. Many in the APA membership seem to have missed the February Newsletter, due to the change-over to electronic distribution. Since I regard the issue of preprints and open access to be of great importance to the future of the organization, I offer it again. My apologies to those who read this Letter last winter. To those missed it the first time around, I hereby reiterate my previous invitation to the members of the APA to make their scholarly work-in-progress public as preprints on the newly formed Classical Research Network (CRN). Instructions about how to find and submit papers on the CRN will be found below. But first I will try to answer the obvious question: “Why should classicists bother with preprints?” Preprints are not peer-reviewed publications. But they can be an important stage on the way to peer-reviewed publication and there is considerable value in making one’s scholarship public in advance of final publication.

Scholarship is, of course, all about making the results of research available to a community of scholars. In the first 120 years after the foundation of APA (in 1869) classical scholarship was made public primarily in the form of printed books and periodicals: peer-reviewed journals, monographs, and in occasional collections of essays and Festschriften. But the situation changed with the coming of the internet. Bryn Mawr Classical Review, which proudly claims the title of the second-oldest online journal in the humanities, began publishing online in 1990. Since then, the quantity of scholarship available online has exploded: e-journals; back issues of hard-copy journals on JSTOR and other archive sites; e-books from ebrary and Amazon.com; online bibliographies (notably APh and CDC); web pages (of organizations, academic departments, and individuals); blogs and more offer the potential for making research publicly available.

The “preprint” or “working papers” series seems to me to offer a promising, and still under-utilized venue for making classical scholarship public. Unlike many forms of internet publication, the preprint series is a time-tested form of scholarly communication. Working papers have long been a standard feature of how scholarly work is carried out in academic departments of social and natural sciences – indeed, some preprint series date back to before the internet era. The popularity of the form is due to several unique advantages that it offers to scholars: Preprints reduce to near-zero the time lag between the completion of an article that is “ready to circulate,” even if not yet “ready to publish,” and its appearance in public. Authors can gain feedback on a paper before it is submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. The chronological priority of a new idea is established once a paper is “datestamped” by appearing in a series. And, not least, readers (including people lacking access to research libraries) gain access to up-to-date academic scholarship.

Despite these advantages, the humanities were slow to follow the lead of the social and natural sciences. It was not until 2005 that the Classics Departments of Princeton and Stanford Universities launched their experimental preprint series, The Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics (http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc). The series is open access –anyone with an internet connection and a reasonably up-to-date browser can access all site content and download papers without charge. Copyright for each paper is held by the author(s); there is no editorial content review (once again: preprints are not peer-reviewed publications). Posting is limited to the faculty and students of the hosting institutions.

The PSWPC experiment seems to have been successful, at least if success is measured in terms of authors (currently ca. 40 faculty and graduate students), papers (ca. 150 – if one counts re-editions), and readers (or at least viewers and downloaders). Our experience in the first year of the series, along with some preliminary readership statistics, are in reported in J. Ober, W. Scheidel, B. Shaw, and D. Sanclemente, “Toward Open Access in Ancient Studies. The Princeton-Stanford Working Papers in Classics,” Hesperia 76 (2007): 229-42 (http://dx.doi.org/10.2972/hesp.76.1.229 - open access). The series was reviewed in March 2008 by David Pritchard in Literary and Linguistic Computing (http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/fqn005v1 - ironically, only the abstract of this review-article is open access).

When we launched the PSWPC site, we hoped that other Classics Departments would set up their own parallel series. The University of Wales Lampeter has indeed done so (http://www.lamp.ac.uk/ric/working_papers.html), but there are non-trivial costs involved with setting up and maintaining a departmental preprint site.

Happily, thanks to the hard work of a team of scholars at the University of Texas (notably Lesley Dean-Jones in the Classics Department and Bernard Black in the Law School) there is now an open access and very well organized Classics preprint series available to all Classicists: the Classics Research Network (http://www.ssrn.com/crn/index.html). The CRN is part of the Humanities Research Network, which is in turn a part of the large and well established Social Science Research Network (the SSRN currently includes over 200,000 papers and gets ca. 7 million downloads per year).

The Classics Research Network is open access: papers posted on the site are uploaded by authors without charge and searched, browsed, and downloaded by readers without charge. Authors retain the copyright and retain the right to post their work on other sites.

To browse the existing papers on the Classic Research Network:
Enter into your browser: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/displayjournalbrowse.cfm, which will bring up a list of Networks. Find, at the bottom of the list, “Humanities Research Network.”

Click the square box in front of Humanities Research Network, which will bring up a list of Humanities Networks. You will find, at the top of the list, “HRN Classical Resarch Network.” Click the title to see a list of all the papers on the CRN, or the box in front of the title to browse specific CRN Subject Matter eJournals (e.g. History, Literature, Classical Tradition).

To register to submit a paper on the Classics Research Network, go to www.ssrn.com and click on “submit.” The procedure for submitting papers to the CRN is quite straight forward and works quickly as soon as you complete registration. By registering, you will set up an individual “author page,” which will include direct links to all your posted papers. For example, my own page is http://ssrn.com/author= 336081. As you become more familiar with the network you will find that its utility grows. You may choose to receive e-mail notification when other scholars post papers in research areas of interest to you. You may submit both preprints (Working Paper Series) and, if you have not given away electronic rights, previously published papers (Accepted Papers Series). After you submit a paper, you may revise it as often as you wish.

I realize that for some classicists posting preprints on an open access web site will initially seem strange, perhaps even dangerous. I believe the risks are minimal and that they are, in any event, much outweighed by the risks associated with failing to make our scholarship public in a timely way. The highly experienced SSRN administrators, who handle tens of thousands of preprints annually, report that publishers ordinarily have no objection to authors having posted their papers with a preprint series. They also report that incidents of posted papers being misappropriated are almost unknown; the few known cases of misappropriation have been addressed swiftly and to the author’s satisfaction. This relative lack of complications for authors is confirmed by my own years of experience with the Princeton-Stanford Working Papers in Classics.

I encourage APA members to submit their papers to the Classical Research Network. My sincere hope is that that the SSRN’s Classics Research Network will soon become a standard place where all those who care about classical studies can freely post their scholarly efforts, and freely obtain access to current research.

Josiah Ober

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2009 Ballot Materials

In August 2009, all APA members in good standing will receive a letter via first-class mail (airmail outside of North America) containing information on the Association's elections this year. If the member has provided a valid e-mail address, he or she will receive this information via e-mail as well. The letter sent by regular mail will contain a paper ballot that members may return to the Association office as usual. However, both versions of the letter will contain a unique URL that the member may use to vote online.

The letter will contain complete instructions for voting either by regular mail or online. See the APA web site for four documents that will assist members in making their selections. These are documents that formerly appeared as an insert to this issue of the Newsletter. Members may request printed copies of any of them from my office.

1. The candidates' biographical sketches and their election statements. In addition, the online ballot will contain links to each candidate's sketch and statement.
2. A sample ballot.
3. The "Elected Officer and Committee List", i.e., the current roster of the Board of Directors and each office and committee that appears on the ballot with the names of the members who will continue to serve in those positions next year.
4. A description of the procedure used to decide elections conducted by preferential balloting. This year the elections to find two new members of the Board of Directors and the Nominating Committee will be conducted in this way.

Ballots cast by mail must be received in the APA Office by the close of business on Tuesday, September 29, 2009. Electronic voting will end at 3:00 a.m., on Thursday, October 1, 2009.

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Message from the Executive Director

My second five-year term as Executive Director concluded at the end of June 2009, and last Summer I informed the Board of Directors that I would like to be considered for reappointment for an additional three years. I asked for a term of a different length on this occasion for two reasons. First, as our capital campaign comes to an end in 2011, I hope that the Board will conduct a strategic planning exercise to consider the Association's future directions, and a shorter term for my office will give the Board greater flexibility in making those plans. Second, as many members know, because of growth in Penn's Classical Studies Department, we will not be able to retain our current space in Claudia Cohen Hall much longer, and new space at the University of Pennsylvania is likely to be considerably more expensive to rent. I hope to remain a University employee (as I have been since becoming APA's Executive Director in 1999) until retirement, but if the financial burden of keeping the APA office here becomes too onerous, I want the Association to be able to move elsewhere.

During the Fall of 2008, the Executive Committee (which conducts my annual performance review) followed the procedure the Board established in 2003 to consider any Executive Director's request for reappointment. Then President Kurt Raaflaub assembled a dossier consisting of my current position description, my reports to the Board, my performance reviews, and letters of evaluation solicited in confidence from all the current and several of the recent vice presidents of the Association, as well as the Chairs of the Development and Capital Campaign Committees.

The Executive Committee reviewed this dossier during the Fall and recommended that the Board approve my reappointment. In January 2009 the Board accepted that recommendation and authorized the President, with the guidance of the Executive Committee, to develop a letter of agreement to extend my appointment. I am grateful to the Board for this expression of support for me, and I am also grateful that my colleagues, Renie Plonski, Heather Gasda, and Julie Carew will continue in their positions. I hope that, with the experience gained during the last five years, we can serve the Association even more effectively during the next three.

I am also pleased to report that Penn's School of Arts and Sciences is permitting us to remain in Claudia Cohen Hall for one additional year. We are very grateful to Rebecca Bushnell, Dean of the School, and Joe Farrell, Chair of Classical Studies for this extension.

Adam D. Blistein
Executive Director

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Board Meeting Minutes

Meeting of the Board of Directors of the
American Philological Association
January 8, 2009
Philadelphia, PA

The Board of Directors of the American Philological Association met at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 8, 2009. Those present were Prof. Kurt A. Raaflaub, President, Dr. Adam D. Blistein, Profs. Ruby Blondell, Barbara Weiden Boyd, Ward W. Briggs, Cynthia Damon, Alain M. Gowing, Judith P. Hallett, Jeffrey Henderson, Robert A. Kaster, David Konstan, Donald Mastronarde, S. Georgia Nugent, Josiah Ober, and James J. O’Donnell, Dr. Lee T. Pearcy, and Profs. Ruth Scodel and James Tatum. Also present by invitation were incoming Board members who would take office on January 11: Profs. Dee L. Clayman, Roger S. Bagnall, James M. May, John Marincola, and Carole E. Newlands.

Prof. Raaflaub called the meeting at 3:35 p.m. He thanked those Directors (Profs. Blondell, Henderson, Konstan, Scodel, and Tatum) who were concluding terms of service with this meeting and welcomed the incoming Directors attending the meeting. In advance of the meeting, the Directors had received an agenda for the meeting and minutes of their previous meeting on September 26-27, 2008.

Action: After one modification and addition, the Board approved the agenda for the meeting

Action: The Board approved the minutes of its meeting of September 26-27, 2008.

Report of the President

Prof. Raaflaub summarized the results of the review of APA programs and services that the Board had conducted during the year and stated that he would soon write to about two hundred Classicists, most of whom had been APA members at one time, urging them to rejoin the Association. He noted that the capital campaign had been making good progress although it was not clear how it would be affected by the recent declines in financial markets. The Association had begun to take appropriate steps in response to these declines; improving membership retention would be one of those steps. He thanked volunteers and staff for their hard work during his Presidency.

Distinguished Service Award

Action: The Board approved the presentation of a Distinguished Service Award at the 2010 Annual Meeting.

Reappointment of Executive Director

Dr. Blistein’s current term as Executive Director would expire in June 2009, and he had requested reappointment for three more years, i.e., through June 2012. Dr. Blistein absented himself from the meeting while the Board discussed this request. In accordance with the Regulations, Prof. Raaflaub had solicited comments on Dr. Blistein’s performance from all current and recent vice presidents and, at Dr. Blistein’s request, from Profs. David Porter and Michael Putnam, the Chairs of the Development and Capital Campaign Committees, respectively. Prof. Raaflaub had shared these comments with the members of the Executive Committee, and the Committee had unanimously recommended that the Board reappoint Dr. Blistein for a three-year term.

Action: After discussion, the Board approved the reappointment of Dr. Blistein as Executive Director from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2012.

Dr. Blistein returned to the meeting. As part of its consideration of the reappointment, the Executive Committee had also discussed the criteria to be used for the Executive Director’s annual performance evaluation. Prof. Raaflaub had circulated a draft of these criteria for consideration by the Board. In a section listing three primary responsibilities several Directors suggested the addition of language concerning communication of the mission and activities of the Association. After discussion, Prof. Ober stated that he would solicit additional comments on this document from Directors before preparing a letter of reappointment for Dr. Blistein.

Reports of Outgoing Vice Presidents

Professional Matters. Prof. Konstan reported that since September all issues submitted to the Subcommittee on Professional Ethics had been resolved privately with the exception of one letter to an institution about its treatment of a member hired for a tenure-track position. Reports on both the departmental census and the survey of journal editors had recently been published, and census data had been used to respond to some specific queries from departments. The Classics Advisory Service had assisted staff of one department threatened with the loss of its Greek program, and the Professional Matters Committee was considering the development of a general strategy to respond to what it expected to be a larger number of such problems in a difficult economy.

Research. Prof. Henderson stated that since his last report the Association had received a grant in support of the American Office from the Packard Humanities Institute. The Office's Advisory Board and the Finance Committee would discuss the use of these funds during the annual meeting. With funds from the Mellon Foundation, Eric Rebillard, Editor of APh Online, was exploring ways to improve the user interface of the electronic bibliography and to install links from it to both modern literature and ancient texts.

At its annual meeting in November SIBC had decided to close all its self-submission web sites but to host sites in which the individual offices could post citations they had prepared before final acceptance by the Editor-in-Chief. A proposal to have offices sign abstracts of articles had been abandoned. Prof. Clayman stated that she was continuing to seek an appropriate archive for the Database of Classical Bibliography material.

The TLL Fellowship was operating on a sound financial basis, and Kathleen Coleman had agreed to accept another term as Committee Chair. At its upcoming meeting the Research Committee would discuss its priorities for the future. Prof. Henderson thanked the members who had served on Research Division committees during his term for their assistance.

Teagle Foundation Assessment Project

The Directors had received a letter from Prof. Barbara Gold asking for comments on a project funded by the Teagle Foundation to study the impact of studying Classics on students' thinking and reasoning skills.

Action: Directors made a number of comments on the study and asked Dr. Blistein to convey them to Prof. Gold.

Annual Meetings

2009 (Philadelphia). Dr. Blistein reported that as of the previous day, the Associations had received registration fees from 2,180 individuals. The majority of registrants submitted their payments online, and this made it possible to extend the advance registration deadline, which in turn, would likely reduce the number who would register at the meeting. He expected a total registration of about 2,300. [The final figure was 2,460.]

As a cost-saving measure, the Board had decided to mail the annual meeting Program to members only on request, and production of the book had been held up to allow for the insertion of a DVD prepared by Prof. Briggs demonstrating the digital portal. Dr. Blistein stated that few members had asked that the Program be mailed to them.

The Office had also experimented with having authors of accepted abstracts submit them online to the printer of the Abstract Book. Some difficulties had been encountered, but the book had appeared on schedule and the same submissions had been posted to the APA web site. At the suggestion of Prof. Ober, Dr. Blistein would discuss online abstract submission with the Social Science Research Network. The call for abstracts for 2010 had already been issued, but it might still be possible to have online submission of individual abstracts in May as a test.

This year AIA had changed its abstract submission deadline from Spring to late Summer in order to capture reports of the current year's excavations. This change had caused the late development of its program, but there had been little difficulty in dividing space among the two associations and affiliated groups.

Future Meetings. Dr. Blistein hoped to continue to retain a third-party planning firm for subsequent annual meetings. The current firm had been reasonably successful in negotiating contracts and had provided excellent assistance to the APA's limited staff in the months before and especially at the meeting. He would propose this course of action to AIA's Executive Director and ask the firm to start negotiating with hotels for the 2013 through 2015 meetings during the current good market for obtaining meeting space.

The 2010 meeting would be in Orange County (Anaheim), California from January 6-9. These dates were a Wednesday through a Saturday (instead of the usual Thursday through Sunday) to permit registrants to return to the East Coast for Monday classes. This meeting would be the venue for the first joint panel with the Classical Association (CA). Prof. Raaflaub and CA Chair, David Scourfield would sign an agreement concerning these panels at the upcoming Plenary Session. The 2011 meeting would take place in San Antonio from January 6-9, and the 2012 meeting would return to Philadelphia on January 5-8. The Directors discussed briefly whether the Associations should consider the Wednesday-Saturday pattern for meetings not on the West Coast. There was no support for this change.

Financial Matters

Finance Committee. Before the meeting, Prof. Briggs had distributed to the Board a memorandum discussing the impact of the current problems in financial markets on the Association's investments and outlining the steps that the Association could take in the next fiscal year (beginning July 1, 2009) to offset what were expected to be decreases in revenue caused by the declines in the value of its endowment and possibly reduced membership, registration, and placement income as well. He stated that the Finance Committee would discuss this memo at its meeting on January 10, and present choices to the Board for consideration on January 11.

Preliminary Financial Statement for 2008 Fiscal Year. Dr. Blistein had prepared an interim financial statement for the 2008 fiscal year. Although an audited statement was not yet ready, the Association's auditors had been in his office during December, and this statement reflected both some of their work and adjustments staff had made in preparation for their arrival. Dr. Blistein said that the current statement had few changes from the one reviewed by the Board in September. He anticipated that the auditor's report would show a decrease in all but permanently restricted assets because of losses in financial markets but that permanently restricted assets would still increase because of an additional $600,000 in pledges to the capital campaign during the year.

Updated Budget for 2009 Fiscal Year. The Directors had received a budget updated to show activity or changed circumstances during the first six months of the fiscal year. These included the grant of $14,000 from the Packard Humanities Institute and additional expenses to reflect the possibility that some or all of these funds would be used to pay additional staff to write citations on a backlog of collected volumes. The budget also contained a more pessimistic number for membership dues because of a lack of growth to date. He hoped that Prof. Raaflaub's willingness to write recruitment letters to a number of senior scholars might reverse this trend. On the other hand, the number budgeted for registration fees now appeared to be too low, and sales of GreekKeys software continued to be stronger than anticipated since Prof. Mastronarde had produced a version compatible with the Windows operating system. The budget also included the costs of producing the campaign's demonstration DVD and of printing new annual meeting signboards to replace ten-year-old boards. Funds set aside for printing a Directory of Members had been used for the latter purpose. Salary costs would be below budget but temporary help costs would be higher because of the impact of staff medical leaves.

Investments. From July to December 2008, the General, Pearson, and Coffin Funds had lost about 20% of their value. The impact of overall financial market declines had been mitigated by the Association's fixed income holdings and some conservative action by the Association's advisors in early 2008. The Research and Teaching Fund's aggressive investment guideline had resulted in a larger (27%) loss. Because it had been established only a few years ago, the value of the Coffin Fund was now about $7,000 below the total of its original contributions. The APA's attorney was preparing an opinion concerning the use of the Fund while it was in this condition.

Dr. Blistein reported that he had spoken to the Association's advisor earlier in the day and the Finance Committee would review that discussion on January 10. The advisor had been maintaining substantial cash positions and wanted to start moving some of those holdings back into equities, slowly at first and more rapidly once she could assess the impact of new administration's policies.

New Board Policies

In September the Board had approved a confidentiality and conflict of interest policy for itself to be distributed annually to all Directors. Dr. Blistein asked for comments on drafts of whistleblower and document retention policies which he had circulated in advance of the meeting. The Association's auditors had recommended that the APA adopt policies covering these three areas because of a pending change in the forms it submitted each year to the Internal Revenue Service. Directors suggested several additions to the document retention policy, and Dr. Blistein stated that, after making these additions, he would ask the Association's attorney to review both documents in preparation for final approval by the Board.

Executive Director's Report

The Directors had received Dr. Blistein's annual report to the membership which he had posted on the Association's web site earlier in the week in lieu of presenting it at the annual meeting. To date 273 donors had pledged $1,386,000 to the capital campaign. The Association had received no major gifts since the Mellon Foundation's major grant in September although several possibilities were being pursued. He noted that the annual giving campaigns were suffering from competition with the capital campaign and that some members were still not aware of the necessity of conducting both. The Development Committee would need to address these challenges.

Changes to Regulations

Prof. Briggs had distributed to the Directors several proposed changes to the Regulations affecting the Finance, Nominating, and Program Committees as well as to the Regulation concerning reimbursement of travel expenses.

Action: The Board amended Regulation 16 to make the Senior Financial Trustee the Chair of the Finance Committee and to modify its language concerning Committee meetings.

Action: The Board amended Regulation 17 to bring its language concerning Nominating Committee meetings in line with current practice.

Action: The Board amended Regulation 41 to describe the current pattern of Program Committee meetings. At Dr. Blistein's request, the Board also modified the Regulation to make the Coordinator of Meetings, Program, and Administration an ex officio member of the Committee with voice but without vote.

Action: The Board amended Regulation 69 to clarify the Association's policy of reimbursing travel expenses of committee members only for meetings taking place apart from the annual meeting, except that members needing to arrive at the annual meeting a day early or stay an extra day would receive reimbursement of the cost of staying in a hotel for one night.

Prof. Scodel noted that when the Nominating Committee met in January, it needed to know which members had been appointed to committees for the following year. She also urged the Board to recommend candidates for office, and she asked that the descriptions of each officer's duties be improved.

Action: The Board approved Prof. Scodel's suggestion that current and former office holders be asked to write descriptions of their duties for collation by Dr. Blistein.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 6:15 p.m.

Meeting of the Board of Directors of the
American Philological Association
January 11, 2009
Philadelphia, PA

The Board of Directors of the American Philological Association met at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 11, 2009. Those present were Profs. Josiah Ober, President, and Roger S. Bagnall, Dr. Adam D. Blistein, Profs. Barbara Weiden Boyd, Ward W. Briggs, Dee L. Clayman, Cynthia Damon, Alain M. Gowing, Judith P. Hallett, Robert A. Kaster, Donald Mastronarde, James M. May, Carole E. Newlands, S. Georgia Nugent, and James J. O’Donnell, Dr. Lee T. Pearcy, and Prof. Kurt A. Raaflaub. Prof. John Marincola was absent.

Prof. Ober called the meeting at 12:00 noon. The Directors had previously received an agenda for the meeting.

Action: The agenda for the meeting was approved.

Action: In accordance with By-Law #14, Profs. May and Newlands were chosen by lot to serve on the Executive Committee for the year.

President's Report

Prof. Ober stated that he planned no major new initiatives for the year but hoped that the Association would use the time for a careful exploration of new media for scholarly communication. Such deliberations would further the Gateway concept of the capital campaign while the Association continued to certify high quality scholarship and the use of electronic publications.

Report of the Development and Campaign Committees

The Development and Capital Campaign Committees had held a joint meeting on January 9. Dr. Blistein reported for the Chairs of the two committees, Profs. David Porter and Michael Putnam. By February 15, a capital campaign appeal would again be sent to the entire membership except for those who had pledges outstanding or who had already made large contributions. Committee members would follow up individually with a number of potential donors who had not yet made pledges. This group included members who regularly contributed to annual giving (but not yet the campaign), members who had recently obtained positions through the Placement Service, and members who responded to a similar mailing last year with a one-time payment.

During the next few months, the Capital Campaign Committee would develop a strategic plan for the second half of the campaign. An ad hoc subcommittee had been formed to develop different approaches to foundations interested in Greek heritage. The Committees also discussed campaign-related events at the next annual meeting and the addition of junior members to the Committee. Finally, the Committees discussed the contents of the Campaign mailing and the Spring annual giving mailing to be sent in April.

Report of the Finance Committee

Prof. Briggs reported on the Committee's meeting of January 10. In order to conserve endowment funds when their market values were depressed, the Committee hoped to limit withdrawals from the funds to 4% of the trailing three-year average instead of the usual 5%. Putting this change into effect would reduce the amount available from the General Fund by $40,000 to $50,000, and the Committee had devoted the greater part of its meeting to identifying those costs incurred in the 2009 fiscal year that it felt should be cut back in 2010 to meet this goal. Although the budget would not be drafted until the Spring, the Committee asked the Board to discuss these recommendations now so that it could know whether the Directors considered these cuts acceptable when the time came.

Action: The Board authorized the Finance Committee to develop a budget for the 2010 fiscal year that would include the following cost savings should the Committee consider them necessary:

· up to $12,000 from a reduced press run of Amphora
· $10,000 from reduced distribution of the Newsletter for a full year
· $23,000 from reduced food service at the annual meeting (including the President’s Reception)
· elimination of the $5,000 reserve for book subventions
· elimination of the $2,000 budget item for marketing

Reports of Vice Presidents

Publications. Prof. O’Donnell reported that TAPA was being produced on schedule, and that a search for a new Editor was in progress. He cited Justina Gregory’s five years of service as Textbooks Editor and stated that it would soon be necessary to find a replacement for Kathryn Gutzwiller as Monographs Editor. If funding could be secured, the Publications Division would hold a retreat during the Fall to discuss the Association’s current arrangements for its book and journal publishing and to consider its appropriate role in the current environment for scholarly publishing. The Publications Committee had agreed to permit departments holding site licenses for GreekKeys to pay a modest additional fee that would include their current students in the license. The Committee had also reviewed progress to date on the Servius project.

Program. Prof. Kaster reported that the current annual meeting program was well received with good attendance at sessions. The Program Committee had met on the previous day and had developed a list of scholars to be invited to organize seminars. The Board discussed the willingness of the Social Science Research Network to maintain an archive of APA conference papers and the scheduling of affiliated group sessions at the time of the Plenary Session.

Action: The Directors instructed Dr. Blistein to ask AIA if it would be willing to prohibit affiliated group meetings taking place at the time of the APA Plenary Session (which was also the time of the AIA Council Meeting).

Research. Prof. Bagnall reported on meetings of the Advisory Boards to the Database of Classical Bibliography and the American Office of l’Année philologique that had taken place during the annual meeting.

Action: The Directors authorized disbanding the Advisory Board to the DCB on June 30, 2009, when the final NEH grant to the project was concluded.

Action: The Directors approved the addition of the Editor of l’Année philologique on the Internet as an ex officio member of the Advisory Board to the American Office.

Prof. Bagnall stated that the Forum for Classics, Libraries, and Scholarly Communication was interested in collaborating with the Research Committee on its survey of classicists' research practices. During its meeting on the previous day the Committee had discussed its future activities in light of the fact that the Association had completed the major projects it had been working on for several decades. The Committee felt that its role would appropriately be the vetting and dissemination of digital projects rather than their creation. The Division was also considering a retreat for further discussion of these issues.

Education. Dr. Pearcy reported on the committee meetings in his Division that had taken place during the annual meeting. The Education Committee considered a proposal that it collaborate with the Professional Matters Division to collect statistical information on doctoral programs in Classics and also discussed ways to encourage more applications for the award for precollegiate teaching. The Committee on Ancient History would propose a revision to its current charge. The Committee on Minority Scholarships proposed to modify its call for nominations to make it clear that the awards were limited to U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Action: The Board agreed to limit the minority scholarships to citizens and permanent residents of the U.S. and Canada.

Dr. Pearcy described progress to date on the Association’s joint effort with the American Classical League to develop standards for Latin teachers and laid out a schedule for action during 2009. This schedule called for publication of a final version of these standards at the end of the year, and Dr. Pearcy explained the importance of having a professionally printed document that could be distributed to educational associations and state accreditation agencies.

Action: The Directors authorized the expenditure of $2,000 on printing the final versions of the APA/ACL standards for Latin teachers.

Dr. Pearcy then described APA efforts to convince the College Board to delay or moderate its decision to reduce the number of AP Latin exams from two to one. While the College Board had not yet issued its final decision, it did not seem interested in creating a two-year sequence of alternating subjects for the exam. The APA Education Committee was beginning to consider how it might develop a curriculum that schools could use to supplement an AP course on a single topic.

Outreach. Prof. Hallett reported that the Committee on Outreach had reviewed a proposed text for a President’s Award to a lay supporter of Classics and would circulate that language to the Board. The Committee would participate in a proposal to the Kress Foundation to fund research among audiences outside of the Association’s membership about the kinds of outreach activities that would interest them. She directed the Board’s attention to the report of the Amphora Editorial Board and noted that its Editors were prepared to accommodate a reduced press run that would be part of the Association’s overall cost-savings measures.

The Committee on Outreach continued to provide Classics experts to the Aquila Theater Company for its Page and Stage program; Aquila was likely to develop a new version of this program. The Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance was considering a film rather than a play for its event at the 2010 annual meeting, and the Committee on the Classical Tradition was seeking to collaborate with scholars working on early American history.

Professional Matters. Prof. May reported on the status of the various surveys conducted by the Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups. The Placement Committee would develop a panel on alternative career paths for the 2010 annual meeting. The Placement Service had – for the first time – been able to issue e-mails to registered candidates in advance of the meeting telling them whether they had interviews scheduled at the meeting. The Committee on Professional Matters was concerned about the efforts of some departments to persuade candidates to accept positions before the annual meeting took place. It wanted to work with staff to modify the Statement of Professional Ethics and the Placement Guidelines to handle such situations. It also wanted to consider offering a reduced rate for listing teaching openings in secondary schools in Positions for Classicists and Archaeologists.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 3:20 p.m.

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American Philological Association/Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Supported by a Generous Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities

The American Philological Association invites applications for a one-year Fellowship, tenable from July 2010 through June 2011, which will enable an American scholar to participate in the work of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Institute in Munich. Fellows at the TLL develop a broadened perspective of the range and complexity of the Latin language and culture from the classical period through the early Middle Ages, contribute signed articles to the Thesaurus, have the opportunity to participate in a collaborative international research project in a collegial environment, and work with senior scholars in the field of Latin lexicography. The Fellowship carries a stipend in the amount of $50,400 and is made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The incumbent Fellow may re-apply for a second year, but all applications will be judged on an equal footing.

Applicants must (i) be United States citizens or permanent residents and (ii) already have the Ph.D. or anticipate the award of the degree by July 1, 2010. The opportunity to be trained in lexicography and contribute articles to be published in the lexicon may be of special interest to scholars who are already established in tenure-track positions, as well as those who are just entering the profession. The Fellowship offers valuable experience for scholars in a variety of specialties (e.g., Latin language and literature, Roman law, Roman history, the literature of early Christianity); although it is not limited to individuals working in Latin philology, applicants should possess a thorough familiarity with and a special interest in the Latin language, as well as advanced competence in Greek. It is anticipated that applicants will already have a reading knowledge of German and will be willing to work toward proficiency in spoken German. Women and members of minority groups underrepresented in Classics are particularly encouraged to apply.

Applications should include a curriculum vitae, a statement of what benefits the applicant expects to derive from the Fellowship for his/her research and teaching, and the names of three referees, whom the applicant should ask to send supporting letters to the Executive Director without further notice. It will be in the candidate’s interest if at least one letter can specifically address the candidate’s suitability for the Fellowship. Candidates will be considered by the APA’s TLL Fellowship Committee, which serves as the selection committee. The committee will choose a short-list of candidates to be invited for interview at the Annual Meeting in January 2010 in Orange County (Anaheim), California, and the name of the successful candidate will be announced shortly thereafter. Applications must be received by the deadline of Monday, November 16, 2009. Applications must be submitted via regular mail or courier. Materials sent via FAX or e-mail will not be accepted.

Applications should be sent to: Dr. Adam D. Blistein, Executive Director, American Philological Association, 292 Claudia Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 249 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304. For additional information about the Fellowship, contact the Chairperson of the APA’s TLL Fellowship Committee, Professor Kathleen Coleman, Department of the Classics, Harvard University, 204 Boylston Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138. Telephone: 617-495-2024. E-mail: kcoleman@fas.harvard.edu.

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LIONEL PEARSON FELLOWSHIP 2010-2011

The Pearson Fellowship Committee invites nominations for the 2010-2011 Lionel Pearson Fellowship, which seeks to contribute to the training of American and Canadian classicists by providing for a period of study at an English or Scottish university. The competition is open to outstanding students majoring in Greek, Latin, Classics, or closely related fields at any American or Canadian college or university.

Fellows must undertake a course of study that broadens and develops their knowledge of Greek and Latin literature in the original languages; candidates should therefore have a strong background in the classical languages. They should expect to obtain the B.A. by September 2010, in order to begin an academic year of postgraduate work at that time. Normally, the recipient will hold the Fellowship in the academic year immediately after graduating with a bachelor’s degree. The term of the Fellowship is one year. The recipient may use the Fellowship for part of a longer program of study, but under no circumstances will support from the Fellowship extend beyond one year. Fellows are responsible for seeking and obtaining admission to the English or Scottish university where they intend to study. The maximum amount of the Fellowship will be $25,000 which may be used to offset academic fees, travel expenses, housing and subsistence costs, and book purchases.

Candidates for the Fellowship require nomination by a faculty member who is familiar with their work. Faculty members who wish to nominate a student for the Fellowship must send the student's name to the current chair, Professor Walter Englert, who will send the nominator an application form and other relevant materials. The committee discourages programs from nominating more than one student, and those desiring to make multiple nominations should contact the chair in advance. Nominations and inquiries may be made only by e-mail to Walter Englert (walter.englert@reed.edu). The deadline for receiving nominations is Friday, October 2, 2009.

The second step in the nomination process is the submission of a completed application. Application materials will be sent to nominators by October 5th and the completed application must arrive at the offices of the American Philological Association by Friday, October 30, 2009.

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2010 Annual Meeting: Deadline for Proposals for Roundtable Discussion Sessions Extended

This 90-minute joint session with the AIA consists of a number of tables devoted to discussions of a variety of topics, with at least one discussion leader for each topic. Members are invited to propose themselves as roundtable discussion leaders. Topics may be the leader’s area of scholarly interest or an issue important to the profession. Since certain topics lend themselves to presentation by more than one leader, proposals for multiple leaders are welcome. The Program Committee believes that these sessions can provide an excellent opportunity for younger registrants (both graduate students and recent Ph.D.'s) to interact with established scholars in a less formal environment than a session or a job interview. Leadership of a roundtable discussion does not count as an “appearance” on the annual meeting program; i.e., roundtable leaders may present a paper or serve as a respondent in an APA paper session.

The Program Committee invites members to submit brief (50-100 word) descriptions of a suitable topic for a roundtable. These submissions for the annual meeting in Orange County (Anaheim), CA should be sent to the Executive Director's Office by September 4, 2009.

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University and College Appointments

The following are the names of the candidates who have obtained new positions through the 2008-09 Placement Service. Additional names will be printed in a future issue of the Newsletter, and we are still accepting submissions. Candidates whose names appear in bold and italics represent individuals who filled a new position at that institution. Also listed are institutions who contacted the Placement Service and stated that no one was hired as a result of their candidate search.

Brown University
Assistant Professor: Lisa Mignone
Postdoctoral Fellow: Rebecca Handler-Spitz

Bryn Mawr College
Lecturer: Francisco Barrenechea

Bucknell University
Assistant Professor: Kristine Trego
Visiting Assistant Professor: Matthew Adams

University of California - Berkeley
Professor: J. Theodore Peña

University of California - Irvine
Lecturer: Kimberly Cassibry

University of California - Santa Barbara
Assistant Professor: Glenn T. Patten

Calvin College
Assistant Professor: Umit S. Dhuga

University of Chicago
Professor: Michèle Lowrie

Christendom College
Search canceled for budgetary reasons.

University of Cincinnati
Assistant Professor: Daniel Markovich

Colgate University
Visiting Assistant Professor: Angelo Mercado
Visiting Assistant Professor: Erin Moodie

University of Colorado
Professor: Carole Newlands

Columbia University
Assistant Professor: Marcus Folch

Cornell College
Assistant Professor: Philip Venticinque

Duke University
Associate Professor: William Johnson
Assistant Professor: Jed Atkins

Emory University
Position not filled for budgetary reasons.

Georgia State University
Search canceled for budgetary reasons.

Gettysburg College
Assistant Professor: Jonathan David
Visiting Assistant Professor: Sean O’Neill

Hamilton College
Visiting Assistant Professor: James Bradley Wells

Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Assistant Professor: James Capreedy

Johns Hopkins University
Postdoctoral Fellow: Sana Aiyar
Postdoctoral Fellow: Olabode Ibironke
Postdoctoral Fellow: Michael Quintero

Loyola University Chicago
Instructor: Benjamin Wolkow

McMaster University
Assistant Professor: Kathryn Mattison
Visiting Assistant Professor: Jeffrey Becker
Postdoctoral Fellow: Accepted candidate withdrew

University of Miami
Assistant Professor: Jennifer Ferriss-Hill

Middlebury College
Visiting Assistant Professor: Laura Samponaro

New York University
Two searches failed.

Oberlin College
Assistant Professor: Hilary Becker

University of Oklahoma
Assistant Professor: Rachel Ahern

University of Pittsburgh
Search canceled for budgetary reasons.

University of Queensland
Search canceled due to department structure change.

University of Rochester
Lecturer: Nicholas Gresens

St. Olaf College
Assistant Professor: Michael Sampson

Swarthmore College
Assistnat Professor: Jeremy Lefkowitz

Sweet Briar College
Assistant Professor: Bryce Walker

University of Sydney
Senior Lecturer: Richard Miles
Lecturer: Anne Rogerson

Temple University
Assistant Professor: Alex Gottesman

University of Texas at Austin
Assistant Professor: Deborah Beck
Assistant Professor: Ayelet Haimson Lushkov

Texas Tech University
Assistant Professor: Jason Banta
Assistant Professor: Christopher Witmore

University of Toronto
Assistant Professor: Jarrett Welsh

Trinity University
Associate Professor: Corinne O. Pache

Union College
Visiting Assistant Professor: Randall Childree
Visiting Assistant Professor: Kristen Gentile

Washington and Lee University
Visiting Assistant Professor: Arum Park

Wesleyan University
Assistant Professor: Eirene Visvardi

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Visiting Assistant Professor: Alex Dressler
Visiting Assistant Professor: Grant Nelsestuen

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Publication of Dissertation Listings

Information on dissertation titles for 2008-2009 will be published in the August 2009 issue of the Newsletter.

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Reminder for Organizers of Panels at 2011 APA Annual Meeting

The Program Guide for the January 2011 Annual Meeting will appear in October. Organizers of affiliated group and organizer-refereed sessions that have been approved for presentation at the 2011 meeting are reminded that calls for abstracts for their sessions should be sent to the Association Office no later than September 18, 2009. See last year's Program Guide (October 2008 Newsletter) for samples of previously published calls for abstracts.

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Awards to Members

Michael C. J. Putnam, Brown University, has received the Centennial Medal from the American Academy in Rome, the highest honor the Academy bestows. Prof. Putnam was recognized for devoted and distinguished service to the arts and humanities, for promotion of understanding between nations of their common cultural heritage, and for exceptional contributions as a scholar, professor and mentor.

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