Cervantes Society of America

Newsletter

January 2008


We hope that your holidays were merry, and that your new year proves to be everything that you want it to be.


Bravissimo!

For the second time in several years, a book by a CSA member on things Cervantine has won the MLA's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for “an outstanding book published in English in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures.” William P. Childers, of Brooklyn College, was awarded a certificate and $1,000 for Transnational Cervantes, published by the University of Toronto Press. The selection committee sees in Professor Childer's study of Cervantes's Los trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda “a new context for reading Cervantes, as an antecedent to contemporary postcolonial literature” which “associates [Cervantes] with magic realism and Latin American fiction of the past half century.”


CSA at the MLA

The annual meeting of the CSA was held on December 30, 2007. CSA President Frederick A De Armas presided and Edward H. Friedman (Vanderbilt University) gave the keynote address entitled “Don Quixote and Character Building.”

Highlights of the Business Meeting:

  1. The topic for next year's regular session will be “Cognitive Approaches to Cervantes.” Submissions should be sent to Vice-President Howard Mancing (mancing@purdue.edu) by early March.
  2. President De Armas announced that the CSA is now an affiliate of die Renaissance Society of America and will present two sessions at the RSA annual conferences, thanks to the efforts of a committee of the Executive Council chaired by Alison Weber. Bruce Burningham will coordinate one session and Robert Johnston and Theresa Sears will jointly coordinate the other of the sessions for the 2009 RSA. Member interested in presenting should submit proposals directly to the organizers.
  3. The Nominating Committee for 2008 elections for delegates of the Executive Council will consist of Barbara Simerka (chosen from the Executive Council) and Encarnación Juárez and Charles Ganelin (nominated from the floor).
  4. The officers of CSA and the Executive Council have recommended changes to the Constitution. The recommendations will by published in the Newsletter in advance of the 2008 Business Meeting in San Francisco, where the members will discuss and vote on the changes, as per the Constitution.

    The major recommendations are:

  5. Cervantes Society of America Treasurer's Report for 2007

    Balance brought forward:
    Checking:  $16,299.95   Savings: $16,088.68
     
    Income:
    Checking:  $12,191.20 Savings: $44.23
    (includes $100 from MLA for journal ad, $587.95 upon closing out postage account at UNCG, and $243.25 in royalties from Gale Group)
     
    Expenditures:
    2006 Keynote speaker:

    $500.00
    2006 Executive Council breakfast meeting:

    $202.81
    Cushing & Malloy for journal printing:

    $1792.23
    Sec./Treas. Supplies:

    $199.92
    Newsletter Copying:

    $405.29
    Newsletter Postage:

    $500.01
    Journal Editor:
         Software:

    $91.69
         Computer repair:

    $138.00
         Editorial assistant:

    $450.00
         Other:

    $222.91
    Banking fees:

    $6.00
    Grant to University of Miami
    Cervantes conference:

    $1000.00
    Total:

    $5,508.86
     
    Balance (as of 12/12/07):
    Checking:  $22,982.29 Savings: $16,137.25
     
    Total CSA Assets: $39,119.54*
    (*The relatively large increase of assets over the previous two years is due to the delay in publishing V. 26 and 27 of the journal.)
     
    Members/Subscribers:
    Individual: 251 (19 new) Institutions: 271 (12 new)

  6. Editorship of the journal: The CSA is grateful to Daniel Eisenberg for his labors as Editor. Due to other commitments, Dan has indicated that he plans to step down in 2008. The Executive Council is in the process of choosing a new editor to help bring the journal up to date.


CSA Session

Howard Mancing presided over the program arranged by the CSA on the topic “Cervantes and the Picaresque,” at which the following papers were presented: “Free Will and the Picaresque in Cervantes” (David Alan Boruchoff, McGill U.), “Absent Housewives” (Bruce R. Burningham, Illinois State U.), and “The Scholarship of Carroll B. Johnson” (Sherry M. Velasco, U. of Southern California). The session was dedicated to the memory of the late Professor Johnson, Cervantes scholar and past president of the CSA


Cervantes elsewhere at the MLA

“Refractions and Reflections: Cervantine Narratives in Contemporary Film”: “The Letter and the Spirit: Palomo Cruz Delgado's Funny Book Don Quixote de la Mancha (1979-81) and Peter Yates's Romantic Don Quixote (2000)” (James A. Parr, U. of California-Riverside); “Rape or Romance? Tragedies of Gendered Violence in the ‘Novelas ejemplares’ of Pedro Almodóvar” (Alvaro Molina, UCLA), and “Early Modern and Postmodern Epistemologies: Don Quijote and Stranger Than Fiction” (Barbara Simerka, Queens College-CUNY and Christopher B. Weimer, Oklahoma State U.-Stillwater). The respondent was Bruce R. Burninghatn (Illinois State U.).

“Movement, Place, and Identity in the Hispanic World”: “Movement and Place in the Novelas ejemplares: Objects of Trial in El amante liberal, the Coloquio as Subjective Vision” (William Henry Clamurro, Emporia State U.)

Theresa Ann Sears, Secretary/Treasurer
Cervantes Society of America
6410 Muirfield Dr.
Greensboro, NC 27410
Fred Jehle jehle@ipfw.edu Publications of the CSA H–Cervantes
URL: http://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csa/nwsltw08.htm