President's Letter
6 November 2009
Dear fellow PAC members:
On behalf of the Executive Board and our host, The College of Charleston, I welcome you to PAC's 34th annual meeting. This year's conference features the theme “Literature as Bridge,” and I hope you share my excitement about the intellectual connections and exchanges that your participation will facilitate. I eagerly await our convention in Charleston next March and thank you for your support of our association.
This year we are honored to have Al Gurganus deliver our keynote address on “Connecting the Humanities with Humanity.” Professor of German and Director of Fellowships at The Citadel, Dr. Gurganus holds a bachelor's with honors in German and history from Wake Forest, a master's in modern European history from Chicago, and a doctorate in Germanics from North Carolina. His groundbreaking book The Art of Revolution: Kurt Eisner's Agitprop explicates the didactic fiction of the socialist leader of Bavaria's 1918 Revolution. Manuscripts in progress include "Kurt Eisner: A Modern Life," the first English-language biography of the martyred German-Jewish journalist. Dr. Gurganus has published articles in Goethe Yearbook, German Studies Review, Germanic Notes and Reviews, the Dictionary of Literary Biography, the Journal of Black Studies, and Postscript. His research interests extend beyond the early twentieth century to encompass Schiller's conceptions of freedom, Lawrence Durrell's critique of post-modernity, and the state-building aspirations of East German cinema. For two decades he has been a faithful contributor to PAC as officer, panelist, session organizer, and Postscript editor. His teaching is recognized by awards from Raleigh's Needham Broughton High School, the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, and The Citadel. There he mentored numerous undergraduates prior to founding the college's Office of Fellowships, including 8 Fulbright scholars and a score of grant recipients who studied at Yale, Cambridge, and at universities in Austria, Germany and Turkey. Al Gurganus is the ideal person to address our conference given his scholarly achievement and his demonstrated ability to connect students via literature to their world past and present.
A conference such as PAC would not be possible without the hard work of many people behind the scenes. It is with deep gratitude, therefore, that I thank Nancy Nenno of the College of Charleston for her willingness to coordinate local arrangements and for her patience in answering my many questions. My fellow Executive Committee members and I are in her debt. I thank also Blake Hobby of the University of North Carolina at Asheville for designing our website and for organizing the panels relating to American and British topics. Both he and Leslie Walker Bickford of Winthrop University are to be commended for arranging registration payments via PayPal and for completing our transition from snail mail to electronic submissions and CfP announcements. PAC thanks Leslie also for her continued service as Secretary/Treasurer and all officers of the organization for their suggestions and support.
As you prepare for the conference, please note that registration information for the conference is located on this website and that you must register before 15 February to avoid the substantially higher late registration fee (Late registration is $100 as opposed to $65 or $50, and late registration does not include any meals.). We appreciate your timely registration, including any Audio/Visual requests, as it helps us avoid needless surcharges and allows our caterers and staff to prepare for your visit.
On-time registration includes membership to PAC, the keynote luncheon at 39 Rue de Jean, a welcome reception on Thursday night, and breakfast on Friday and Saturday. Payment may be made via PayPal (preferred) or by check. Information about these two options can be found on this website by clicking on “Registration.”
For your convenience, a block of rooms has been reserved at The Francis Marion Hotel. Information about it and other lodging possibilities can be found on this site under “Accommodations.” The deadline for reserving rooms at The Francis Marion is 9 February.
I encourage you to consider submitting your finished paper to Postscript, PAC’s peer-reviewed journal. Published since 1983, Postscript is now housed and archived fully online (see link on our homepage). Manuscript submissions are accepted during the conference or generally within a month thereafter. More information can be found under the appropriate link on this site or by contacting Merritt Moseley (moseley@unca.edu).
On behalf of the Executive Committee, I thank you again for your support of the Philological Association of the Carolinas and look forward to welcoming you to Charleston in March. If you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at smithdav@ecu.edu or 252.328.5524.
Sincerely and with best wishes,
David
David L. Smith
2009-2010 President, Philological Association of the Carolinas
Assistant Professor of German
East Carolina University
www.ecu.edu/foreign
www.ecu.edu/german