The following letter was sent to current and recent ASECS members on Nov. 25, 2025.
11/25/2025
Dear ASECS Colleagues,
I’m very pleased to report that the Philadelphia meeting is shaping up to be one of our largest and most exciting gatherings in many years. As you will soon see, there are so many wonderful papers that no one will be able to take it all in, but that is proof of our vibrancy. Thank you to Hanna Roman and the rest of the Program Committee for your hard work on vetting and scheduling these sessions.
Thanks also to everyone who agreed to forego A/V if it was not absolutely necessary for their talk. Your collective willingness to go back to that old technology called “the handout” or use the conference app to upload a slide deck just cut our A/V bill in half, saving the society close to $50,000. That’s the equivalent of a significant fundraising campaign! I’m grateful for your stewardship of our resources.
We will be using some of our A/V savings to keep the cost of registration down and to provide funding for those without travel support, available on a first come basis until it runs out. You can apply in either the graduate student, non-tenure track, or general categories. We know that the struggles are real, and we hope that we can remove barriers to attendance for many of our members facing financial hardship.
I encourage you (if you have not already done so) to look at the News Circular Benita sent around last week. The combination of the X-CD return address (our new membership management software) and the reference to the “magic link” for registration left some of you wondering if this was legitimate. Fear not; this was indeed Benita, the email is legit, and the links will take you to registration safely. If you do not see that email, this more general link will get you to registration (look for the “Register” button top left), but you’ll need to put in your own login information. Most of you have profiles already. Check by entering your email as your login ID and password. You can find both current and past News Circulars here on our website.
Remember that everyone can appear on the program up to two times, (this includes chairing two-part panels), and can present a paper on only one panel. You can reference the Annual Meeting Guidelines and Rules, which are available on the Meeting page, if you have questions.
When you register, you’ll be able to see that the celebratory Women’s Caucus 50th Anniversary luncheon is now open to guests, that international attendees will get a break on registration costs, and that discounted tickets for The Contrast can be purchased with registration for any night of the conference. More exciting opportunities will be included in the program and on the website in the coming weeks.
Good luck with the final weeks of the semester, and start looking forward to Philly!
All best,
Misty G. Anderson
President, American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, 2025-26
Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of Theatre and Religious Studies, University of Tennessee
president@asecs.org