Notes from the Executive Director: 1988 Convention

Abstract

Members of the RMMLA at the 1988 annual meeting in Las Cruces enjoyed warm weather and hospitality under clear New Mexico skies. The 307 registered participants attended sessions on a wide variety of topics and expressed appreciation for the diversity and the quality of the presentations. At the banquet and next day at the Plenary Session, Russell Jacoby suggested that the embedding of American intellectuals within colleges and universities has accelerated specialization and precluded them from speaking with authority to any but a limited number of other specialists. As a result, no one remains to address the public. Respondents Sally Kitch (Wichita State University) and Barry Sarchett (Incarnate Word College) remarked the need for plural points of view and inquired to whom we would address ourselves and in the service of what agenda when outside our teaching function. These issues generated lively interest now carried to a number of campuses. Arrangements for the convention went as smoothly as one can expect with an undertaking of this nature. Although Continental Airlines changed several of its flights after RMMLA confirmed arrangements with them, approximately 80 people made flight reservations through the Buck Rogers agency and were kept updated on changes in travel schedules in addition to receiving the best fares possible. We owe our thanks to Waldo Glock who served as local arrangements host and to Dean Thomas Gale of the College ofArts and Sciences who bravely undertook to provide financial and human resources for the meeting. Thanks also are due to the section chairs and presenters. RMMLA offers its best wishes to New Mexico State on the occasion of its one hundredth anniversary. In 1989 the RMMLA will meet in Las Vegas at the Alexis Park Hotel, a non-gambling hotel with transportation to the Las Vegas strip. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, our host, and MarieFrance Hilgar, the local arrangements chair, have considerable experience in giving conferences, and we look forward to a pleasant and productive meeting. The call for papers for the 1989 convention will be published in November as soon as all the section reports are received. Reserve October 19-21, 1989, for the RMMLA meeting. In its continuing effort to offer members an exciting program as well as a forum in which to test their ideas, the RMMLA Executive Board decided at the meeting of October 20 to prohibit the reading of "in absentia" papers at future meetings; to offer members the opportunity to volunteer a $2.00 payment (or larger donation) to support "Connections," the RMMLA Women's Caucus Newsletter; to drop lapsed sections in Other Germanic, Science Fiction, Small