[log in to unmask]February 4
Hi Gloriia --
I forget -- did you send out the SPHS minutes? If not, here they are again...
Hope all goes well, best,
Philip
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SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE HUM AN SCIENCES
Annual Business Meeting Minutes
Thursday, October 29, 2009, 6:30 pm
Arlington, Virginia
The meeting came to order at 6:30 pm, chaired by Philip Lewin, Co-Chair, Executive Committee.
1. Membership, Philip Lewin.
The basic structure of membership was reviewed:
-Presenters are expected to be members.
-Dues run conference to conference;
-There is no separate conference registration fee; participation in the conference is a benefit of membership.
-Annual dues are $50 (regular) and $20 (student and low waged)
2. Lewin asked for a moment of silence in memory of Mary Rogers.
3. Gary Backhaus was thanked by all for serving as Program Chair
at this year’s conference.
4. Treasurer's Report by Lenore Langdorf, Treasurer.
Langsdorf expressed a concern that membership dues be paid by all participants at SPHS conferences. She proposed that authors be notified, when their papers are accepted, that their dues must be paid by a certain time if they are to be listed on the program.The acceptance note (with copy to the Treasurer) could include a membership form as an attachment. TheTreasurer could notify the Program Chair and Membership Chair, before the stipulated date, of receipt (or not) of dues. (Note added after the conference by Lewin: The date that the program copy is due to be submitted to SPEP for inclusion in the SPEP program booklet could be a logical time for receipt of membership dues.)
Possible alternative ways to increase revenue were raised, including raising membership dues and a proposal by Ron Arnett that SPHS should create a category of institutional membership. Arnett suggested that a membership dues of about $150 would be appropriate for an institutional membership.
Langsdorf reported that the current Society balance is $16,987.33. This amount does not include dues collected at the current conference nor costs paid for at the current conference.
5. Human Studies information, Lenore Langdorf, Editor
A list was circulated at the business meeting on which those at the meeting could sign up to receive, via email, the Table of Contents when Human Studies is published. The list won't be sold or given out for other mailings. Members can also now indicate, on the membership form, their interest in regularly receiving (quarterly) the Table of Contents.
Langdorf noted that the success of Human Studies is highly dependent on downloads. If our libraries subscribe, Knowing what's been published through receiving the Table of Contents might encourage us to
download articles of interest. Especially during this time when academic
libraries are cutting back on subscriptions, showing that the journal is being used is important. Actively downloading articles is one way to show this.
6. Announcement, Philip Lewin
SPEP will be meeting next year in Montreal, Canada, sponsored by McGill University. (Note added after the conference by Lewin: SPEP will be meeting from November 4 to November 6, 2010.)
7. SPHS participation at the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations (OPO), Mike Barber,
Michael Barber thanked SPHS for allowing him to represent the Society at the 2008 Organization of Phenomenological Organizations meeting in Hong Kong. He mentioned that OPO was divided into 5 regions: Asia-Pacific, Euro-Mediterranean, Latin America, North America, and Northern Europe. Annual dues for organizations to OPO is 35 euros per year. OPO decided not to have an official language. The 2011 meeting of OPO will take place in Madrid, Spain, under the leadership of Augustin Serrano de Haro. Ion Copoeru was elected Secretary General for the next three years.
Lester Embree, founder of OPO, offered comments about the International Conference of North American Philosophers (ICNAP). There was a brief discussion concerning publication of manuscripts by OPO. The question of a possible conflict in venues for publication between OPO and Human Studies was raised by Lewin and Langdorf. Embree indicated that OPO does not publish a volume every year so for the moment, there is no conflict. Further discussion concerning this issue may be pursued after the meeting.
8. Distributed Cognition Colloquia, Anjana Bhattacharjee
Bhattacharjee raised a number of issues related to making greater use of the internet to further support the activities of the Society. These included collaborating and conferencing more online; co-developing initiatives with scholars from other disciplines; making greater use of the SPHS listserv; creating a blog that could be linked from the SPHS website; perhaps having abstracts of conference papers posted on the website;
making more use of open source software and social networking sites such as Facebook; perhaps providing electronic equipment to presenters
if costs are reasonable; and in general finding ways for the membership to make use of the techbology to stay connected between conferences.
Bhattacharjee stressed the importance of using the technology to support a visceral sense of connection with one another when we are geographically dispersed and, in particular, of it underwriting an articulation of our need to meet face-to-face.
9. Status of the Schutz lecture, George Psathas
The Schutz Lecture this year (2009) will be given by Tom Eberle, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
For the first time we do not have the support of the American Philosophical Society. The APA and their committee on Lectures,
Publications, and Research says that it was not consulted adequately in the selection of a speaker for this year and that they would not participate or send the funds that APA normally does. Until they respond to our requests for clarification and for procedures as to how to proceed for future years, we and CARP, which continues to support the Lecture, are proceeding on our own.
Psathas will inform the Executive Committee of any next steps to be taken.
As a reminder, we wish to note that in the past the speaker has been paid an honorarium of $1,000. shared by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology (CARP) and APA and that SPHS has provided the venue for the presentation, paid for one night's stay at the conference hotel, and held a reception following the talk. The lecture is published in the Society's official journal, Human Studies.
The Schutz Lecture committee currently consists of a representative from CARP, Lester Embree; from SPHS, George Psathas; and a representative from APA.
In general, the consensus of those in attendance at the business meeting was that the Society should continue to support the Schutz Lecture in any way possible, commensurate with our resources.
10. Nomination and election of officers to the Executive Committee, Philip Lewin
10a. Continuing officers. Most officers will continue in their positions for another year. Their positions are not yet open for election.
10b. Prolonging officers' terms to stagger elections. The election of members of the EC has fallen somewhat out of its intended rotation. While only two positions on the Executive Committee (Program Chair and one at-large position) fall open this year, in 2010, most of the positions on the EC will fall vacant. It would be desirable to re-stagger the terms of office of the EC.
Toward this end, Hisashi Nasu agreed to have his term as an
at-large member of the Board extended for a year, to 2012. This extension was approved by acclamation.
The terms of the Co-Chairs of the EC, Lewin and Bhattacharjee, both end in 2010. They agreed to determine after the meeting that one of them would extend his or her term for one additional year in order to
re-establish staggered terms of office at this position.
10c. Tom Conroy was nominated for the office of Program Chair for the 2010 conference and elected by unanimous affirmative vote.
10d. Sean Saiter was nominated to replace Ken Liberman as an
at-large member of the EC and was elected by unanimous affirmative vote.
11. The questions of the relationship of SPHS and the Schutz Lectureship, and of SPHS and OPO were referred to the Executive Committee for further deliberation.
12. The meeting was adjourned at 7:25 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathy Hoover, Secretary
