Elections for our new Board positions, two at-large members and one Second Vice President, will open on March 13. Prior to that date, we have a mandatory period for nominations by petition. In order to have such a nomination considered, the proposal must come from a member in good standing with fifty signatures of members in good standing and be delivered to the Executive Director no later than Feb. 26. Nominations must not violate our Bylaws or policies, including our priority on diversity of fields, areas, and overall representation.
- Feb. 12, 2026 (56 days before the Annual Meeting): Election slate and petition instructions published
- Feb. 26, 2026 (14 days after publication of the Election Slate): Deadline for nominations by petition, sent to the Executive Director
- March 13, 2026 (28 days before the Annual Business Meeting): Ballot and instructions circulated to members
Board of Director Candidates
ASECS members will elect 3 new Executive Board members: 2nd Vice President, and 2 Members-at-Large to begin their terms in July of 2026. 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.
Graduate Student Representative:
Pamela Ahern (elected by the Graduate Student and Early Career Caucus)
Continuing Elected Members
2024-2027: Member-at-Large, Brian Cowan
2024-2027: Member-at-Large, Olivia Sabee
2025-2028: Member-at-Large, Al Coppola
2025-2028: Member-at-Large, Chloe Northtrop
Appointed Members
Joseph Bartolomeo, Treasurer
Manushag “Nush” Powell, Parliamentarian
Misty G. Anderson will serve as Past President, ex officio and nonvoting.
The bios of the candidates presented by the Nominating Committee are:
President
Elena Deanda-Camacho
I am a Professor of Spanish and Black Studies at Washington College. My work bridges literary analysis with cultural critique, offering insights into the intersections of freedom of speech, censorship, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender in early modern Spanish-speaking societies. My 2022 book, Offensive to Pious Ears: Obscenity and Censorship in 18th Century Poetry in Spain and New Spain (in Spanish, Iberoamericana), establishes a canon of 18th century pornographic poetry in Spain and New Spain to investigate the politics of obscenity and the poetics of censorship. In 2023, this book won Best Monograph prizes given by the Spanish Society for 18th Century Studies (SESXVIII) and by the Association for Gender and Sexualities Studies (AEGS). My 2024 book, Trovar: Metapoetics in Occitania and Sotavento (in Spanish, University of Veracruz), analyzes the ways in which popular poetry crafts its poetics during its own performance. My current book project, Pornopoetics, explores the poetics of 18th century pornographic literature in imperial Europe. My work has been published in journals such as Eighteenth Century Studies, Studies of Eighteenth-Century Culture, Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert, Bulletin Hispanique, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, or CESXVIII, among others. In 2023-2025 I became a Fulbright Global Scholar in the universities of Bonn (Germany), Oviedo (Spain), and UNAM (Mexico); and I am in the scientific committees of “EMODER” in the University of Valencia and “Monarchic Censorship” in the University of Oviedo.
I am currently the first vice president of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), the president of East Central American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ECASECS), the President of Feministas Unidas, and the Chair of the DAOC at the Modern Language Association (MLA). I have served as President of the Ibero-American Society of Eighteenth Century Studies (IASECS) and Co-Chair of the Mexico Section at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). As a President of ASECS, and a Mexican-American professor, my commitment lies with both the empowerment of a rising wave of multicultural scholars in the American academy and the establishing of effective and long-lasting allyships between academies around the globe, institutions, ranks, and scholars. More importantly, in a moment with high degrees of radicalization, skepticism, and social fracture, I advocate for empowering 18th academics to reclaim the public sphere, share their expertise, and effectively impact the larger society.
1st Vice President
Amy Freund, Southern Methodist University
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,
2nd Vice President Candidates
Tili Boon Cuillé, Washington University in St. Louis
I am a Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. My first book, Narrative Interludes: Musical Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century French Texts (Toronto, 2006), investigates the national and gender politics of the opera quarrels that divided public opinion in eighteenth-century Paris and their impact on literary form. My second book, Divining Nature: Aesthetics of Enchantment in Enlightenment France (Stanford, 2021), supported by an NEH Fellowship, questions the disenchantment narrative, locating the marvelous in the age of reason in natural history, opera, painting, and the novel. My current book project on magical objects examines the influence of the initial translation of the Arabian Nights into French on eighteenth-century material and print culture.
I have coordinated our Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Salon, a works-in-progress group for faculty and graduate students, with Rebecca Messbarger for 25 years. Garnering numerous grants from our Center for the Humanities, I managed our annual budget and organized the visits of our guest speakers along with workshops, mini-conferences, and international colloquia. I was DUS of French and Comparative Arts for 13 years and am currently DGS of French and Francophone Studies. I revamped the curricula and helped redesign these programs while serving as mentor and advocate. One of my greatest pleasures has been to present papers and chair panels at the ASECS and ISECS conferences and to serve on the editorial board of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture as well as on the Clifford and Kenshur prize committees. I am firmly committed to keeping these forums for intellectual exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration alive, ensuring all voices are heard and needs are met, at a time when funding cuts are threatening their survival.
Mariselle Meléndez, University of Illinois Champaign
Mariselle Meléndez is a Frances O’Connell Endowed Faculty Scholar and Professor of Colonial Spanish American literatures and cultures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on issues of race, gender and sexuality in colonial Spanish America with special interests in the eighteenth century. She is the author of Deviant and Useful Citizens: The Cultural Production of the Female Body in Eighteenth-Century Peru (2011 & 2021), Raza, género e hibridez en El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes (1999), and coeditor of Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture, and Experience (2002). Her numerous articles have appeared in journals such as Latin American Research Review, Colonial Latin American Review, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, among others. She is also coeditor of “The Enlightenment in Colonial Spanish America,” special issue of Colonial Latin American Review (2015).
She is currently the Director of the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and served as Head of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese between 2016-2021. She has also served the UIUC campus community in several leadership roles, including Chair of the Campus Promotion and Tenure Committee, Dean’s Fellow for Faculty Development in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS), and elected chair of the Humanities Council Committee. In 2023, she was awarded the University of Illinois Executive Officer Distinguished Leadership Award. Her national academic service includes being a review panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Division on Literature of Colonial Spanish America for the MLA.
Member-at-Large 1 Candidates
Jared Richman, Colorado College
I am Professor of Literature and Director of Book Studies at Colorado College, where I teach courses on 18th-century literature, British Romanticism, book history and materiality, Critical Disability Studies, and the Gothic tradition. My work has appeared in numerous journals and collections, and my research has been supported by fellowships across the United States and the United Kingdom. I am currently finishing a manuscript entitled “Transatlantic Realms”: British Romanticism and the Idea of America. I am also at work on a book-length study that traces the relationship between nascent elocutionary theories of the Enlightenment and disability in Anglo-American culture.
I am honored to stand for election to the ASECS Executive Board so that I might give back to an organization that has given so much to me, first as a graduate student and now as a faculty member. ASECS has been my intellectual home for two decades, where I have served on smaller working committees and was one of the founding members of the Disability Studies Caucus. At my home institution I have served in numerous administrative roles from Director of College Writing to department chair to membership in the faculty senate. If elected to the ASECS Executive Board, I would seek to expand access to resources for all colleagues (grad, early career, tenured, and contingent) across all types of institutions. I am particularly interested in advocating for ASECS members devoted to disability justice and to help those teaching at small colleges forge intellectual connections and collaborative professional opportunities.
Downing Thomas, University of Iowa
Downing A. Thomas is Professor of French at the University of Iowa (UI). He is the author of Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime: 1647-1785 (Cambridge UP, 2002) and Music and the Origins of Language: Theories from the French Enlightenment (Cambridge UP, 1995). He is also co-editor (with Anny Dominique Curtius) of Francophonies of the Early Modern / Francophonies de la première modernité, a special issue of the journal L’Esprit Créateur (Winter 2024) and (with Roberta Montemorra Marvin) of Operatic Migrations: Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries in Musical Drama (Ashgate, 2006). His articles have appeared in ECS, SECC, Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment, Representations, and Common Knowledge, among others. He has received grants and fellowships from the NEH, ACLS, McMaster University/ASECS, the U. S. Department of State, and the FACE Foundation.
Thomas is standing for election to the ASECS Board of Directors because of his strong belief in the Society and what it offers its members across disciplinary borders. Previous service to ASECS include President, MWSECS (2001), Editor and Assoc. Editor, SECC (2006-09), and Nominating Committee member (2002-03). He has served as President of ADFL (2007) and has been named Chevalier (Knight) in the Order of Academic Palms (France) and Honorary Professor (Hebei Normal Univ., China). Other board and administrative experience include serving as associate provost and dean of UI’s International Programs (2008-19); chair of the UI Department of French & Italian (1999-2002; 2003-07); member of the Board of Directors of Pyxera Global (a Washington, DC nonprofit; 2012-2019); and US Advisory Board member, UniQuest ( a UK-based service provider specializing in international enrollment management; 2021-). Thomas is a lifetime member of ASECS, committed to supporting its role as an inspiring home for a diverse community of scholars and teachers.
Member-at-Large 2 Candidates
Yota Batsaki, Dumbarton Oaks
Yota Batsaki is the executive director of Dumbarton Oaks, a Harvard research center, museum, and historic garden in Washington, DC. Previously, she was Fellow and Director of Studies in English at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where her teaching focus was the eighteenth century. Since joining Dumbarton Oaks in 2011, she has developed the organization’s human resources, strategic planning, communications and outreach, and partnerships. She also started a new program of skill-building fellowships for humanities graduates interested in careers in museums and cultural organizations.
Batsaki has broadened the intellectual agenda of Dumbarton Oaks, notably by securing a Mellon grant to start the Plant Humanities Initiative. Major outputs have been an open access digital platform (Plant Humanities Lab) and scholarly programming that combines approaches from the arts, sciences, and humanities. She coedited The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century (Dumbarton Oaks, 2016);and is editing the first Handbook for Plant Humanities with Peter Crane (Bloomsbury). She serves on the board of The George Washington Museum and Textile Museum, DC; the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Greece; and the editorial boards of Nuncius, a European journal for the history of science, and Plant Perspectives. She would contribute to the work of ASECS her significant administrative experience, commitment to furthering interdisciplinary research and innovative pedagogy, and her track record in providing pathways to diverse careers for humanities graduates.
Wendy Bellion, University of Delaware
I am a professor and Sewell C. Biggs Chair in American Art at the University of Delaware (UD). My scholarship takes a broad approach to the art and material cultures of the Atlantic World, including the books Citizen Spectator (2011), Iconoclasm in New York (2019), and Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century (co-edited with Kristel Smentek, 2023). My latest research explores the women of Philadelphia’s Peale family and the visual culture of early American theater. I am also co-editing a special issue on “Revolution” for Journal18 and a volume about iconoclasm across the early Americas.
I am standing for election to the Executive Board of ASECS because I am excited to serve an organization that has provided a vital intellectual home for me since I was a graduate student. In my administrative roles as an Associate Dean for the Humanities (2022-25) and Director of UD’s Center for Material Culture Studies (2019-22) and Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (2011, 2017-18), I sought to promote the values and commitments that also distinguish ASECS, especially equity, interdisciplinarity, mentoring, and career advancement. I developed funded internships, faculty grants, research forums, and public humanities programming, and I led fifteen academic units, including Africana Studies, English, Languages, History, and Philosophy. As a board member of the American Antiquarian Society, HECAA (Historians for Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture), and Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, I participated in strategic planning, fundraising, and membership campaigns—initiatives central to ASECS’s national work. At a crucial moment for humanities advocacy, I welcome the opportunity to contribute these skills and experiences.
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
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.