The elections for new Executive Board Members will be held in February. Current members (dues paid through June 30, 2025) are eligible to vote. You’ll receive an email ballot as the time approaches through our new elections software “Election Runner”. It’s easy to use – even on your cell phone. Please note the following dates:
- Jan. 30, 2024: Deadline for nomination by petition (cf. Constitutional Article VII, Sections 3, 4, and 5; Bylaw 7b)
- Feb. 14-28, 2025: Election period via electronic ballot, sent via email
Executive Board Candidates
ASECS members will elect 3 new Executive Board members: 2nd Vice President, and 2 Members-at-Large for the period July 1, 2024-June 30, 2025. In accordance with our Constitution and Bylaws (see the Governance page), the current 2nd Vice President stands for the 1st Vice President position, and the current 1st Vice President stands for the President position.
In accordance with our Constitution and Bylaws:
Constitutional Article V, Section 5: Nominees for Second Vice President shall be members of a discipline different than that of the First Vice President.
Constitutional Article V, Section 6: No more than three members of the Executive Board, excluding the Executive Director, Treasurer, and Parliamentarian, shall be members of the same discipline.
- Key for categories (cf. Bylaw 3):
- (a) English and American Language and Literatures
- (b) Languages and Literatures other than English and American
- (c) Music, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts
- (d) History
- (e) All Other Disciplines
Candidates:
President: Current 1st Vice President Misty G. Anderson
1st Vice President: Current 2nd Vice President Elena Deanda-Camacho
2nd Vice President:
- Drew Davies (Category C)
- Amy Freund (Category C)
Member at Large 1:
- Al Coppola (Category A)
- Jason Shaffer (Category C)
Member at Large 2:
- Chloe Northrop (Category D)
- Robert Paulett (Category D)
Continuing Elected Members
2023-2026: Member-at-Large, Barbara Abrams (Category B)
2023-2026: Member-at-Large, Karen Stolley (Category B)
2024-2027: Member-at-Large, Brian Cowan (Category D)
2024-2027: Member-at-Large, Olivia Sabee (Category C)
Appointed Members
Benita Blessing, Executive Director
Joseph Bartolomeo, Treasurer
Manushag “Nush” Powell, Parliamentarian
Paola Bertucci will serve as Past President, ex officio and nonvoting.
Candidates for Executive Board
Members who will continue on the Executive Board and their respective categories are listed below the candidates for election.
President
Misty G. Anderson (Category A: English and American Language and Literatures)
Misty G. Anderson is Professor and Head of English at the University of Tennessee, where she also holds courtesy appointments in the Theatre and Religious Studies departments. Anderson is the author of Imagining Methodism in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Enthusiasm, Belief, and the Borders of the Self (Johns Hopkins, 2012) and Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy: Negotiating Marriage on the London Stage (Palgrave, 2002), and is co-editor of the Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama and Theatre, vols. 1 and 2 (2017 and 2019), with Daniel O’Quinn and Kristina Straub. She has held fellowships at the Beinecke Library, the Lewis Walpole Library, and the Newberry Library. She edited Restoration for 13 years and has published essays and reviews in numerous journals, including ECS, ECF, ECTI, SECC, ECL, RECTR, Critical Times, and Modern Philology. She is one of the founders of the R/18 Collective, a dramaturg for the Clarence Brown and Red Bull Theatres, and a producer of staged readings of Restoration and eighteenth-century plays. She has served ASECS as a past Board member (2016-20), member of the Executive Director search (2020-21), chair of the Women’s Caucus (2015-17), co-chair of the Masquerade Ball Committee (2013-14 and 2017-18), and co-chair of the first Women’s Caucus fundraising committee (2002), as well as in posts as chair of the MLA Restoration and 18thC, later 18thC, and Religion Literature Executive Committees and on the SEASECS board. She believes that ASECS’s future depends on recommitting to our diversity as a community of interdisciplinary scholars; to fostering new work on the global eighteenth-century; to supporting our non-tenure-track colleagues in better and new ways, and to connecting to larger public audiences and artists to communicate the value of our work. Anderson is currently ASECS’s 1st Vice President.
1st Vice President
Elena Deanda-Camacho (Category B: Languages and Literatures other than English and American)
I am a Professor of Spanish and Black Studies at Washington College, where I teach Spanish and early modern literature. I specialize in 18th-century pornographic literature in Europe and the Americas, and my 2022 monograph entitled Offensive to Pious Ears, just won the 2023 Prize to the Best Monograph given by the Spanish Society of 18th-Century Studies and the 2023 Prize for the Best Monograph given by the Association for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. I was president of IASECS or the Ibero American Society of 18th Century Studies, and the current LASA (Latin American Studies Association) Mexico Section co-chair. In 2023 I became the recipient of a Fulbright Global Scholar Award to collaborate with the universities of Bonn in Germany, Oviedo in Spain, and UNAM in Mexico.
As a Mexican-American female professor at a small liberal arts college, my commitment lies with the empowerment of women, immigrants, and Afro-descendants. As for women, I recently co-edited a volume on women and capital reuniting women scholars from various institutions, nations, and fields on the topic of analyzing the role of women in acquiring and administrating capital. As for Latin American scholars, I manage the LASA Mexico Section, and as the Latinx Students advisor, I actively seek to cultivate a strong presence of Spanish speaking and Hispanic heritage students in the higher-ed system. With regards to the Black experience, as the Black Studies program director, I have worked in my college and outside to advance the most pressing issues of our African American students and of the Black Studies field with online seminars and lecturerships. I am currently ASECS 2nd Vice President of ASESC.
Having been a representative in other professional associations, I envision my role as one that advocates for issues that do not seem necessarily self evident, like the need for organizational policies and funding to alleviate the extra pressures women have on the profession (daycare issues for conferences, mentoring), the need to take a clear stand against the precarization of our profession by envisaging alternative career paths through mentoring and coaching; the need to bring to the table as decision makers a new and more diverse cohort of leaders who bring innovative ideas to our association, but more importantly, in a moment with high degrees of radicalization, skepticism, and social fracture, the need to empower 18th academics to reclaim the public sphere by purposefully becoming public scholars who, with their expertise, can impact the larger mediatic society, be it through outreach, civic engagement. or media interventions. I hope that my ideas contribute to our association.
2nd Vice President Candidates
Drew Davies: (Category C: Music, Visual Arts, and Theater)
Drew Edward Davies is Chair of the Department of Music Studies. He is a specialist in 17th- and 18th-century music in Latin America, Iberia, and the wider European context, with complementary research interests in colonialism, contemporary architecture, and a diversity of musical genres and practices.
Professor Davies creates academic scholarship, editions and catalogs of primary sources, and frequently collaborates with performing groups such as the Chicago Arts Orchestra to revive and better understand repertoires of early modern music. His critical editions of music from 18th-century Mexico, Manuel de Sumaya: Villancicos from Mexico City and Santiago Billoni: Complete Works, are available from A-R Editions. His thematic catalog of the music archive at Durango Cathedral, Mexico, is published by the press of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Professor Davies is also Academic Coordinator of the Mexico City-based “Musicat” project, the Seminario de Música en la Nueva España y el México Independiente (Seminar on the Music of New Spain and Independent Mexico). He is active in the American Musicological Society, Society for American Music, the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, and the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music and has presented at academic conferences and early music festivals throughout the USA, and in Mexico, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Cuba, Poland, and Japan.
Amy Freund (Category C: Music, Visual Arts, and Theater)
Amy Freund is an associate professor and the Kleinheinz Endowment for the Arts and Education
Endowed Chair in art history at Southern Methodist University. Her first book, Portraiture and
Politics in Revolutionary France (Penn State, 2014), examines the uses of portraiture to
reformulate personal and political identity during the French Revolution. Her second book,
Noble Beasts: Hunters and Hunted in Eighteenth-Century French Art, which will appear with
Yale in 2025, analyzes the representation of masculinity, animality, and political agency in
hunting art. Her work has appeared in The Art Bulletin, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Journal18,
Art History, and French History, and has been supported by the Center for Advanced Study in
the Visual Arts and the Clark Art Institute. She has served as vice-president and president of
HECAA (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture), on the editorial board of
Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment, and the ASECS graduate student paper prize committee.
She was elected president of HECAA at the dawn of the pandemic, and worked with the officers
and board to transform it into a radically more public-facing, inclusive, and equitable intellectual
community. Under her leadership, HECAA created research showcases for emerging scholars, a
pandemic relief fund, a standing DEI committee, and an ongoing series of online research and
mentorship events. Her work at HECAA was rooted in her belief in the values of ASECS: its
support of members at all career stages and in all professional roles, and its ongoing work to
provide spaces (real and virtual) of intellectual exchange and conviviality for scholars of the
eighteenth century across disciplines and geographies,
Member-at-Large 1 Candidates
Al Coppola (Category A: English and American Language and Literatures)
Professor Coppola studies the innovations of the 18th century that structure the 21st, with a special interest in the roles that science, spectacle, and quantification played in the culture of the long eighteenth century. His first book, The Theater of Experiment: Staging Natural Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016. A critical study of science in performance and science as performance in the Enlightenment, the book analyzes both the role of spectacle in the creation and verification of natural facts and the ways in which science was itself performed in both domestic and theatrical spaces.
Professor Coppola is currently at work on a new book project, Enlightenment Visibilities, which explores the long legacy of Enlightenment technologies and strategies that rendered into certain knowledge previously invisible, unknowable and ephemeral phenomena.
Jason Shaffer (Category C: Music, Visual Arts, and Theater)
Jason Shaffer is Professor of English (and a former department Chair) at the United State Naval Academy. He is the author of Performing Patriotism: National Identity in the Colonial and Revolutionary American Theatre (University of Pennsylvania, 2007). He has published in, among other venues, Theatre Survey, Early American Literature, Comparative Drama, and Common Place, along with essays or chapters in several edited volumes and reference works. He is affiliated with the Theatre and Performance Studies Caucus (TaPS), and ASECS has been his primary scholarly home since attending his first conference in 2001.
As an interdisciplinary scholar with a strong record of collaborating across fields and someone who has also presented at theater studies, history, and early American studies conferences, he feels strongly that the future of ASECS lies in multidisciplinary outreach and in encouraging the presentation and publication of scholarship on material originating (or circulating) outside the British metropole.
Member-at-Large 2 Candidates
Chloe Northrop (Category D: History)
Chloe Northrop is the Department Chair and Professor of History at Tarrant County College. She received her Ph.D. in History with a minor in Art History from the University of North Texas, and is a proud member of HECAA. Her recent publications include “Flagellating Females: Insense and Insensibility in Plantation Jamaica” (Britain and the World) and Fashioning Society in Eighteenth-Century British Jamaica (Routledge).
In addition to advocating for community college faculty and students, Northop is passionate about engaging with the public. In Fall 2024, she was a guest curator for an exhibit commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII in Johnson County, Texas. She is currently working on a project involving celebrity and material objects of Admiral George Rodney.
Robert Paulett (Category D: History)
Robert Paulett is Associate Professor for History at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
“The Bewildering World of William de Brahm: An Eighteenth-Century Map Maker Surveys the End of Time.” Eighteenth Century Studies 42, no. 4 (Summer 2009): 481-99.
Paulett has served on the Annibel Jenkins Committee. He previously served on the Program Committee.
Continuing Executive Board Members:
Elected Members
2022-2025: Member-at-Large, Meghan Roberts (Category D: History)
2022-2025: Member-at-Large, Emily Friedman (Category A: English and American Language and Literature)
2023-2026: Member-at-Large, Barbara Abrams (Category B: Languages and Literatures other than English and American)
2023-2026: Member-at-Large, Karen Stolley (Category B: Languages and Literatures other than English and American)
Past President, Lisa A. Freeman (Category A: English and American Language and Literature)
Appointed Members
Benita Blessing, Executive Director
Joseph Bartolomeo, Treasurer
Manushag “Nush” Powell, Parliamentarian
Depending on the outcome of the elections, the elected 2024-2025 Executive Board will include one of the following disciplinary categories (appointed members – Executive Director, Treasurer, and Parliamentarian – are not part of these categories):
Either:
3, (a) English and American Language and Literatures
3, (b) Languages and Literatures other than English and American
1, (c) Music, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts
3, (d) History
0 (e) All Other Disciplines
Or:
3, (a) English and American Language and Literatures
3, (b) Languages and Literatures other than English and American
2, (c) Music, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts
2, (d) History
0 (e) All Other Disciplines
You can read the official details of our nominating and voting procedures in our Constitution and Bylaws on our Governance page. We have also compiled a list of FAQs about the nominating and election process below; references to Articles and Sections are from that document.
FAQs
Elections
Who can vote in elections?
Members in good standing, defined as members whose ASECS dues are current.
What positions are we voting for?
- If the current 1st Vice President agrees to serve as President for the next Board year, that person stands unopposed.
- If the 2nd Vice President agrees to serve as 1st Vice President for the next Board year, that person stands unopposed.
- The 1st Vice President must be elected.
- 2 positions for Members-at-Large must be elected.
- Any other position that is vacant due to a Board member not fulfilling the term of service.
- Candidates are announced at least 100 days before the beginning of the Annual Meeting. (Bylaw 7a)
- Candidates submitted by Petition must be received by the Executive Director 65 days before the beginning of the Annual Meeting. (Bylaw 7b)
- See the timeline on the Elections page for this year’s dates and deadlines and other election details.
How do we vote?
- Current members will receive a link to an electronic ballot on or by 42 days before the Annual Meeting via email. ASECS uses the voting system Election Runner.
- The link you receive has a unique User ID that can be used only once. You do not need to log in or remember a password. It’s a very easy system that works from your computer, tablet, or cell phone!
- Votes must be cast by 30 days before the Annual Meeting. Election announcements are announced after they are validated, usually within 10 days of the close of voting.
- If you do not receive a link to the electronic ballot by email, please:
- Check your spam folder.
- Ensure that you were a current member on the day the ballot was sent out. If you became a member after the ballot was sent out, you will automatically receive a ballot within 1-3 business days.
- Contact the Executive Director Benita Blessing (director@asecs.org) with questions, or if you don’t receive a ballot by the beginning of the election period.
- You can also check whether your membership is current, and make changes yourself by logging in to your profile at https://asecs.press.jhu.edu/membership/profile.
Thank you to everyone for voting in this year’s elections!
Nominations
What does a Nominating Committee do?
o Article VII (“Elections”) of ASECS’s constitution stipulates that the Executive Board appoint a Nominating Committee as part of our annual elections. The committee’s job is to ensure that the election slate follows our society’s rules for open Board vacancies, with attention to the criteria for representation as outlined in our Constitution, accounting for a range of disciplinary fields, ranks, and institutions.
What about other considerations?
o The Board has instructed the Nominating Committee to seek diversity, gender balance, and representation of constituencies that are currently underrepresented both within and outside ASECS.
How does disciplinary representation work?
o We are an interdisciplinary society, and our Constitution thus stipulates that our Board reflect multiple disciplines. Sometimes exceptions must be made to these stipulations, of course, and disciplines are not always clear cut, but in general:
- Article VII, Section 2, states that there cannot be more than 3 elected officers (i.e. excluding the Executive Director and the Treasurer) from the same discipline.
- Further, according to Section 5, the 2nd Vice President and 1st Vice President should not come from the same discipline. Since our current 2nd Vice President is an historian, nominees for the 2nd Vice President must come from other disciplines. (You can read more about disciplinary definitions in the Bylaws portion of the document linked above.)
What about the Vice President and President positions?
If the current 2nd Vice President is willing to advance to the 1st Vice President position, and if the current 1st Vice President is willing to advance to the President position, the Nominating Committee does not propose other candidates.
How do I propose a candidate to the Nominating Committee for open positions?
o It’s really easy! Just submit a name of a member and a link to their website (or you can include their c.v.) via the form at the top of this page, and a short note about why you think they would be a good candidate to serve on the Executive Board.
Can I propose myself?
Yes! It’s helpful if you include a brief statement about why you would like to serve on the Executive Board, and feel free to include a c.v. or a link to your website, just like you would if you were nominating someone else.
What happens then?
o The Nominating Committee selects two candidates each for 2nd Vice President and members at large vacancies according to the criteria above and makes sure they have agreed to run. The Committee forwards its report to the Executive Director, who then sets up the ballot. As per the Constitution, Article VII, Section 5, instructions for additional candidates will be sent out to members. (You can read more about specific deadlines in the Bylaws section of the document linked above.)
o Then we vote! (Only members in good standing are eligible to vote.)
Do you have to be a member to run for office?
o Yes – in order to appear on the ballot, candidates must be members in good standing. It’s easy to join or renew. Just go to this page: ASECS membership
I still have questions about some aspect of the nominating process or election, or about the duties of Executive Board officers.
o You can contact the chair of the nominating committee (n.aljoe@northeastern.edu) or Benita Blessing, Executive Director (director@asecs.org).
On behalf of the Nominating Committee, thank you to everyone who participates in the nominating process.