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April 15, 2000 _ April 21, 2001 _ April 20, 2002 _ March 15, 2003

Annual Meetings – AAIS 2003
Women’s Studies Caucus
Minutes of the Meeting
Georgetown University, Washington, DC, March 15, 2003

• The meeting began at 12:15 p.m. About fifteen people were present.

• The minutes from last year’s meeting were approved.

• The President, Angela M. Jeannet, opened the discussion on proposed changes in the Women’s Studies Caucus Mission Statement regarding the jury in charge of assigning the yearly Women’s Studies Caucus award. Expressing the opinion of several members of the Caucus, A. Jeannet proposed that only tenured faculty be in the jury, mostly in consideration of the fact that untenured faculty should not be burdened with additional work.

An animated discussion ensued. Then, the following amendment was voted and unanimously approved:

The recipient of the award will be an untenured member of the AAIS Women’s Studies Caucus for a research paper on any aspect of women’s studies. The panel of judges will be comprised of three tenured members of the Women’s Studies Caucus.

It was decided that information on the award be sent to Gentili’s mailing list, indicating also how to become a member of the WSC.

• Angela Jeannet introduced Silvana La Spina, an Italian writer, who expressed the desire to become member of the WSC and provided informed comments on all of the discussed issues. It was decided that she is going to become an honorary member of the WSC.

• Angela Jeannet reminded the mebership that the AAIS has a web site (www.aais.info) in which the Women’s Studies Caucus has a permanent page with all the relevant information. From this page it will be possible to join the WSC. Dawn Green (dawn.green@stanford.edu) is in charge of the Caucus page.

• The secretary, Irene Marchegiani, passed around the members’ e-mail addresses list for corrections and changes.

• She announced the publication of Quaderni del ‘900, a new journal of Italian Studies that accepts publications exclusively from advanced graduate students and untenured faculty. She will mail precise information on the journal to the WSC mailing list.

• Angela Jeannet presented two documents she prepared: Document #1, The Presence of Women in Italian Studies, and Document #2, Italian Women Writers in Translation.
The discussion that followed was very productive and concrete, mostly on how to divide the work that needs to be done and how to acquire information and data already available.

About Document #1, Stefania Lucamante will contact the Italian embassy in Washington and Giovanna Bellesia will seek funds for a student assistant to conduct part of the research. Silvana La Spina will collect data from Italian publishers.

About Document #2, Angela Jeannet informed the membership of an interesting and important project: The University of Chicago initiated the digitalization of texts by Italian women writers from the first works available in Italian to 1945. Angela Jeannet read a message by Elissa Weaver, who is in charge of the Chicago project. Angela will write back expressing the Caucus members’ doubts and asking explanation about the fact that husbands, children, and other family information are indicated in relation to the women writers whose work is digitalized. This specific project, however, does not foresee to include information on existing English-language translation of the texts.

It was decided that the WSC members will share–through the mailing list—information and suggestions on Italian women writers whose works have been translated, need to be translated, or are out of print.

• For the 2004 meeting, it was decided to invite Elizabeth Welles and Elissa Weaver.

• Tommasina Gabriele suggested to explore how women studies courses are taught currently, following, among others, the most recent theories on race and immigration. For this purpose, the Women’s Studies Caucus will sponsor a session on the subject.

• The meeting was adjourned approximately at 1:40

Irene Marchegiani Jones
(Women’s Studies Caucus secretary)
These minutes have not been approved.