Minutes for AMS meeting 4/11/25
Call to order: 9:04
Present: Alex Garganigo, Anita Sherman, Ann Huse, Christopher D’Addario, Emily Stelzer, Blaine Greteman, Hyunyoung Cho, Jennifer Chibnall, Jonathan Koch, Julianne Werlin, Lottie Page, Ryan Netzley, Steve Hequembourg, Tessie Prakas
RSA recap
- 4 great panels sponsored by the society, followed by a Friday happy hour
- Thanks to presenters and chairs, to the EC for helping Julianne and Chris assemble topics, and to Blaine as ex-officio president
- Even with competition from SAA, attendance was pretty good. Our association with RSA seems to be working well; probably don’t need to move away from that in the immediate future. We had no difficulty in filling our four panels (initially we’d had some concerns). A couple of panelists did have to drop out for travel-related reasons given the current climate. We also had the bonus Milton and Marvell panel (well-attended).
- Going forward:
- The panels were generally attended by a similar set of people: how might we expand outreach?
- We should work on coordination with the Milton Society at the RSA especially in terms of programming social events
- This would also enable more collaboration across panels: increase participation and visibility across conference
Executive Committee
- Two members completing terms (Tessie Prakas and Hyunyoung Cho)
- Blaine will continue to serve as ex-officio member of the committee
- Matt Augustine has re-entered as secretary
- Both Chris and Julianne have one more year in their roles; three continuing EC members
- Hyunyoung will extend her role for another three-year term; Jonathan Koch will start a three-year term replacing Tessie
Website
- Currently quite out of date and in need of updating.
- Student research intern has now been put in place to renovate and update: will happen over the summer
- We hope to put up a substantial and continuing calendar of upcoming events: look for an email from Chris asking people to submit relevant events
- The newsletter will also be posted there
- We also hope to include a list of current and upcoming publications in Marvell studies and perhaps more broadly in 17thC studies
- Highlighting a few recent publications by Lottie Page, Stuart Mottram, Margaret Summerfield, and numerous essays related to Marvell in the recently released Oxford Handbook ed Augustine and Zwicker
Update on Marvell Studies journal (Ryan Netzley)
- Later this year, will put out an issue of four articles roughly organized around pastoral/georgic; this may expand depending on possible further submissions following RSA
- Wants to reiterate the excellence of RSA in specific relation to the journal: forum to hear great work and to encourage submission, gathering as we did benefits the strength of our discourse and thus the journal
- For 2026, planning a special issue guest ed by Phillip Donnelly and Feisal Mohamed as festschrift for Nicholas von Maltzahn
- These tentative plans do not mean that people should not submit work: please do and encourage others to submit.
- This includes suggestions for recent books for possible review
- Turnaround time remains relatively speedy: 6-8 weeks from receipt to getting reviews back
- Journal continues to be hosted by Open Library of the Humanities, which seems to be working well
- OLH and its future: if your institution has available OA or DH money, OLH could use it. OLH has a form template: email Ryan to request it.
- Thanks from Chris to Ryan for the excellent and generous work he continues to do for the journal.
Discussion of future Marvell studies events
RSA
- We plan to hold panels again at RSA, in San Francisco in 2026.
- The EC will meet soon to come up with panel topics; suggestions welcome and should be sent to Chris. We usually do three topic-specific calls and then one open call each year. One panel could be a roundtable.
- Call will go out some time in June, deadline for submissions is usually late summer
- Follow-up email will go out to society after this meeting
Possibility of a Marvell-centric conference, possibly in 2027
- Partly stimulated by Blaine who has institutional support, could happen at Tulsa under his auspices
- Blaine: thanks again to Chris for all his RSA work and website work. The challenge of bringing people together for a sustained conversation at RSA is part of the impetus for a more Marvell-focused event
- How many people would we have? Depending on interest, it may be a better use of resources to organize e.g. an RSA dinner. Thoughts from others?
- If this were to happen, would we pull our participation from RSA that year?
- Another possibility: co-sponsoring this with other affiliate societies eg Donne, Spenser, Herbert
- This option seems a great way to talk about the future of more “minor” poets (not Milton, not Donne) in our curricula
- Risk: the fact that these other societies already have events might lead to over-saturation
- Another framing possibility: early modern poetry and poetics
- Tulsa has a journal (Nimrod) that is focused on poetics: might increase audience. Blaine will gauge Tulsa faculty interest on the ground, and will contact other author-focused societies over the summer to gauge interest
- Critical mass of interest on this call
- For younger scholars especially, a smaller conference with a still relatively open 17thC focus is a great forum to make connections
- If this is a success, and if we can find funding elsewhere than Tulsa, we could eventually try to make this eg a triannual event
Online events
- Hope to organize at least 1-2 online events, probably in the fall
- Maybe one on where “other” poets fit into the curriculum
- Maybe one to share research
- We did Spenser and Marvell at Random a few years ago: possible repeat
- Might connect with the Milton Society
- Any other suggestions should be sent to Chris