S-USIH Business Meeting Minutes 2017

Executive Committee Meeting

28 October 2017, 11:50AM

Dallas, Texas

Attending

Kevin Schultz, Leah Gordan, Rebecca Brenner, Richard Candida Smith, Lora Burnett, Tim Lacy, Lillian Calles Barger, Ben Alpers, Andrew Hartman, Sarah Georginia, Andrew Seal, Ray Haberski, Andrew Klumpp, Paul Croce

Agenda

2017 Conference chair’s report

President’s Report

Treasurer’s report

Secretary’s report

Publications report

2018 Conference chair’s report

Conference Chair’s Report

Lora Burnett:

Covering Annette Gordon-Reed’s travel

Two requests

  1. Ask that we ensure conference against cancellation
    1. Reasons
      1. State laws
        1. For instance, California cancelled reimbursement to Texas because bathroom bill
      2. $50,000 at risk
  • Because learning curve
  1. 2018 conference: two options
    1. Outsource catering
    2. Use the same person every day

“I haven’t seen one unhappy discontented person here”

Ben & Tim & Kevin: Is insurance easy?

Lillian: Insurance is cheap

Collective agreement that Ray shouldn’t take charge of this unless we pay him

President’s Report
Kevin Schultz:

The new website is active, and it is the most expensive non-conference expenditure

Asks for ideas: repository for older intellectual history journals, Radical History Review, and podcasts

Andrew Seal: Maybe include comprehensive exam lists on the website, as well as the top five new books

Ben: Maybe include bibliographies on the website

Sara: Should we have a Twitter account?

Tim: Lost previous S-USIH Twitter account

Sara: Small or big access to the USIH Twitter; what should we tweet

Tim: African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) Twitter account does well

Sara: Sara volunteers to facilitate the S-USIH Twitter account

Kevin: Second year of Dorothy Ross prize

Book award: Need a senior chair and ask broader range of people to serve on award committees

Ben: Couldn’t donate to Henry F. May Fund with a credit card

Kevin: Wild Apricot was easiest and least expensive

Rebecca: Loves Wild Apricot

Kevin: Maybe have 2-year terms instead of 1 year
Ben: Stagger terms

Treasurer’s Report

Leah Gordon:

S-USIH is doing well financially

Possible rebate from hotel

$40,000 in bank

$20,000 of that goes to hotel

Secretary’s Report

Rebecca Brenner

Switched to new website

171+ registrants

509 active members

Publications Report

Richard Candida Smith:

Main thing so far was that newsletters were half of anticipated cost

There is organization news

Committee on diversity

Reintroduced member books in the newsletter, which was labor-intensive. Might add major research articles

Kevin: Need new About Us and history and minutes on the website

Ben: Just light editing on the blog

Tim: Lillian and Robert were the best co-editors of book reviews

Richard: Wants to re-launch the book reviews

Tim: Reinforces the importance of book reviews

Kevin: No formal journal for various reasons

2018 Conference Update

Tim Lacy:

Signed hotel for November 8-11, 2018

Talking to publishing presses

Richard: What is the number of rooms

Leaning toward only panel submissions

Andrew Seal: Solve the USIH and American Society for Legal History (ASLH) overlap

Sara: Might combine USIH with ASLH in 2020

Meeting adjourned 1:19PM