Dear all,

I’m pleased to announce the results of our elections:

President: Paul Edwards

Vice President: Emma Newcombe

Secretary: Jordan Pouliot

Treasurer: Amanda Mayo

GSO Liaison: Sam Shupe

AMNESP Executive Committee Student Representative: Sarah Leventer

Preservation Coordinator: Ian Stewart (Fall ’13; will nominate new PC in December)

Fundraising Chair: Rachel Kopelman

Americanist Forum Chairs: Channon Miller and Mary Potorti

Social Chairs/Orientation & Welcoming Coordinators: Catherine Martin, Channon Miller, and Sam Shupe

AMNESP Journal Editor in Chief: Rob Ribera

Web: Gretchen Pineo

Please contact the person who has been in this position before the end of this semester to discuss your responsibilities for next year! To see the list of personnel, visit: http://blogs.bu.edu/amnesp-gsa/personnel/

Thanks to everyone who participated! I will be in touch about our end of year gathering!

Best wishes,

Casey

Dear all,

I've had a few heartfelt emails and real-time conversations with folks over the past couple of days that reveal some possible misunderstandings and/or anxieties about the GSA nomination and elections process.  Please allow me to clarify a couple of key points to allay any or all of these feelings.

First of all, you can and should nominate yourself for any number of positions within the GSA.  In fact, I would encourage you to put your hat in the ring for a few positions, for reasons that I'll get into below.

Secondly, I think we should substitute the verb "nominate" for the more accurate "volunteer."  Stepping up to a leadership role in the GSA is a great service to our community, and if you step up it's likely that you'll have a position.  While the GSA does need an executive committee composed of one president, one vp, one secretary, and one treasurer in order to meet the requirements of BU's Student Activities Office (and thus maintain our official status and access to our now-sorta-flush bank account), we've had more than one person on many jobs this year, and I don't see why that couldn't or shouldn't continue.

Thirdly: more than a few people have expressed concerns about nominating themselves for fear of being in competition for or edging people out of positions.  This is a really, really good problem for us to have as a community, because it demonstrates the level of good will and respect that we have toward one another.  That's where the multiple nomination/volunteering thing is key: once I've got a bunch of names, I'll ask nominees which positions they want to run for--and if you need to know whether others are in the running, I'll be glad to tell you.  Then, you can opt out for that position, but keep yourself on for another.

I hope this clarifies the terms of the process and encourages everyone to, in the words of the immortal Tracy Flick, "Sign up for tomorrow today!"

Best,

Casey

Dear fellow AMNESPers,

Happy April!  I hope that you are soaking up the long-awaited sunshine outside even as I type this.

I have been remiss in writing to you about elections for our GSA; it's time for us to focus our energies upon next year's leadership and agenda.  But first, a moment of congratulation and reflection.  We've accomplished a lot together this year and I think we should note the following developments:

We established an officially recognized and approved graduate association at the university

We built a web presence for the GSA

We conducted monthly meetings to address matters relevant to the graduate community of AMNESP*

We assisted faculty in an external review process that confirmed our program's national profile and ranking

We maintained the success of the Americanist Forum

We revitalized the Learning the Ropes series

We began the process of creating a new AMNESP online journal

We founded a social action committee

We organized a conference that drew fellow graduate students from a range of institutions across the country

We established a place for a student representative on the AMNESP executive committee

We began the year dependent upon the Program for funding and now have $545 in our GSA account

We celebrated together through new social channels and events

Undoubtedly, there are projects and accomplishments that I have missed, but such is the way with such an ambitious group of people!  Suffice it to say that we've done a good job and we have done it together.  In that spirit, I am requesting nominations for the following positions on the GSA for next year:

President--see Casey for details/questions re: responsibilities

Vice President--see Niki

Secretary--see Jared

Treasurer--see Becky for details

GSO Liason--see Tessa, Rachel S, or Ian S

AMNESP Executive Committee Student Representative--see Niki

Preservation Coordinator--see Haley

Orientation/Welcoming Coordinators--see Adrea, Channon, Sam

Fundraising Chair--see Sarah

Americanist Forum Chair--see Kathleen or Rob

Social Chair--see Emma or Karen

Gretchen Pineo has graciously agreed to remain our webmistress unless or until someone in AMNESP would like to take that on.

Please send your nominations to me by this Friday, April 12th.  I will contact all nominees this weekend to ensure their willingness to participate, and then we will hold elections next week.  After the elections, I will send out an email about the final AMNESP GSA meeting for this semester.

Thank you all,

Casey

* Except for March, because holy cats running a conference takes up a lot of time.  Sorry about that.

Dear fellow AMNESPers,

Thanks to everyone who could make it to the meeting on Monday, and to Jared for his faithful summarizing of the discussion.  You can find the minutes under the Governance tab, but I wanted to highlight a couple of items:

1.  We're having a conference! It's happening! It's on Saturday, March 23rd, at 147 Bay State Road, there will be great speakers, there will be good food...and you should be there.  This is an event that stands to showcase much of the hard work that we all do to make this program outstanding, and my hope is that it will also be inspiring to many of us who are off in the [metaphorical] wilderness doing orals and dissertation work.  It's a gathering point, it's a time for networking and schmoozing, and it's a time to remember why we're doing all of this work in the first place: to get in a room with a bunch of other smart and hard-working folks to exchange ideas and learn from one another. And to eat free cookies. The schedule is here: http://blogs.bu.edu/amnesp-gsa/amnesp-conference/

2.  The GSA currently has $0 in its bank account, which is slightly less than optimal.  Since funding for this year's conference has been provided by a one-time BUCH grant and AMNESP discretionary funding, the conference is effectively our biggest fundraiser this year.  That said, if you have paid your AMNESP GSA dues, it will be free to you.  That means you get a free (tasty) lunch, and several snacks, and more goodies at the closing reception, in addition to hearing some good talks.  All you need to do is...pay your dues ($10).  Just download and fill out the form provided here http://blogs.bu.edu/amnesp-gsa/governance/ and give or mail it to: Gretchen Pineo c/o AMNESP, 226 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.

As ever, please be in touch with me with any thoughts on the above, or matters beyond.  I look forward to seeing all of you soon!

Best,

Casey

Happy Spring Semester, everyone!

Take a look at the calendar, there are a few events coming up, including the February GSA meeting (at noon, on Monday, February 11), the final lecture in the Material Culture series on Thursday, Feb 21 at 5:30, and the Graduate Student conference on March 23rd.

The agenda for the GSA meeting can be found on the governance page, we hope to see many of you there!

As always, if you have any questions or comments about the blog, feel free to get in touch!

Cheers,

Gretchen

(webmistress)

The call for papers for our first conference as the AMNESP GSA is in the process of going out to various mailing lists, and has been posted here under the AMNESP Conference tab, so polish up those abstracts and get your submission in!

This Monday (October 22) is the first Material Culture Lecture series, at 6pm in CAS 200, you can find more details here.

Tuesday is the second lunch meetup at from 12:30-1:30 in Room 110 of our beloved 226 Baystate Road.

Keep an eye on the calendar for more upcoming events!

Best,

Gretchen

Dear all,

Happy October!  I wanted to follow up our fantastic meeting and welcome-back party last Thursday with a brief note of thanks for a remarkable first month of the fall term.  The grass-roots energy that I witnessed at the meeting was inspiring, and I can't wait to see what we, collectively, are able to do this year.  I'd like to thank Jared Champion for his excellent meeting summary (see the governance page).  Please mark your calendars for the following upcoming events:

Thursday, October 25th, at 6.00pm: AMNESP GSA Meeting (226 Bay State Road, Grad Student Lounge)

Finally, a note about the rewards of collective action.  In last week's meeting I referenced an article by scholar Claire Potter, whose blog ("The Tenured Radical") is hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Potter asks us to consider when competition--often considered a negative force in academia--might serve as a positive force for students and faculty alike.  An excerpt that has stuck with me since I first read the piece:

"Good competition results in people pushing each other to be better.  Good competition is when you look at a colleague who is publishing a lot and instead of making a list of the reasons you can’t, or don’t seem to want to, write, thinking instead that you are going to bring your game up just a notch.  Good competition is when you are interviewing for a job, you’re scared, you’ve heard all sorts of rumors about “what they really want” and you decide to go for broke and leave it all on the floor in your job talk. Good competition is when you have a writing group that is being supportive, but not just supportive – you are goading each other on to really finish something...Good competition is, when you are brainstorming with a group of colleagues, coming up with an idea that is just a little bit better, more original, and more viable, and is going to push the group harder."

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2012/04/when-is-competition-a-positive-force/

It's my hope that this year our GSA will do just what Potter suggests--namely, to inspire all of us to work that much harder, both for personal gain and for the collective good.  When one of us does well from AMNESP, we *all* look good, because our program gains ground in the esteem of a wider community of scholars.  This has tangible benefits in terms of funding: as one professor recently put it to me, fellowship committees like to reward scholars who come from productive programs.  We've recently seen some great success on the part of our graduate student community; my hope is that we'll all help each other to raise our game ever higher this year.

See you all soon, and my best wishes for a good month.

Casey

Hi Everyone!

Just a few quick updates for you all:

Last week's meeting (the first of the year!) was a great success, thank you to all who attended! Minutes from the meeting will be forthcoming, but as a quick rundown, we discussed the status of our GSA being officially recognized by the university (it was still a work in progress as of last Thursday), the first annual AMNESP GSA Graduate Student Conference was introduced (first meeting is this Thursday, October 4 at 5:30 in the second floor lounge!), the GSA Constitution was ratified, and the upcoming Academic Program Review was brought to everyone's attention. You should have received an official email asking you to participate - please do, this is our chance as students to have our opinions heard! Preservation students will meet from 5 - 5:45 on Monday, October 15, and Doctoral students will meet from 9:30 - 10:30 on Tuesday, October 16; both meetings will be held in room 110 of our beloved 226 Baystate Road.

Additionally, Sarah Leventer, our fundraising chair, is looking for fundraising ideas, so if you've got a good one, let her know!

I hope everyone's semester is going smoothly, and don't forget to keep an eye on the calendar for upcoming events!

Cheers,

Gretchen

Join us for the first American Conversations lecture! Details are below.

10/22/2012 in CAS 200 at 6pm

Dale Broholm, Senior Critic of Furniture Design & Dale Cavicchi, Associate Professor of History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences, Rhode Island School of Design

"Witness Tree Project: Teaching History and Material Culture Through Object Creation"

For more about this lecture and the rest of the American Conversations series, go to http://www.bu.edu/amnesp/resources/events/material-culture-series/