2003 Minutes

Society for Ming Studies Evening Meeting, 7:00pm, March 28, 2003, AAS Conference, New York, New York

The meeting was called to order by outgoing President Kim Besio.

  1. Besio introduced Martin Heijdra, new President of the organization, and turned the meeting over to him.
  2. Heijdra introduced Katy Ryor (Carleton College) the new editor, and Phillip Kafalas (Georgetown University) the new book review editor of Ming Studies. Ryor urged people to consider submitting their academic work to the journal, stating that “we’re fast, refereed and we will do illustrations.” Kafalas also solicited both books to be reviewed and volunteers to do reviews. Books for review should be mailed to his office address:
    Professor Philip A. KafalasDept. of East Asian Languages & Cultures

    Georgetown University

    Box 571052

    Washington, DC 20057-1052

  3. Ted Farmer invited submissions for the monograph series published by Ming Studies.
  4. Heijdra opened the floor for nominations to the Board of Directors for the Society for Ming Studies. Three people were nominated and elected, one to fill the remaining term of Katy Ryor, who has assumed editorship of Ming Studies. The three four new members of the board are Kenneth Swope (Marist College), Tsing Yuan (Wright State University), and Anne Gerritsen (Warwick University), and Joe Dennis (Minnesota) as the student representative.
  5. Heijdra announced the procedure for those wishing for Ming Studies sponsorship of an AAS panel. Ming Studies welcomes the opportunity to sponsor proposals for panels related to Ming topics. Please send panel proposals to Martin Heijdrawho will then distribute the proposal to board members for approval.
  6. Heijdra opened the floor for nominations to the position of president-elect of the Society for Ming Studies. The president-elect will assume the presidency at the 2005 AAS meeting. Outgoing board member Sarah Schneewind (SMU) was nominated and unanimously elected president-elect. This concluded the business portion of the meeting.
  7. Heijdra introduced Tom Nimick (U.S. Military Academy) and Bruce Rusk (UCLA/Princeton) who discussed their experience using electronic resources in their research. Three data bases discussed and compared were the Siku Quanshu, the Academia Sinica’s Scripta Sinica, and Taibei Gugong. Discussed was also the electronic version of the Ming Shi lu, compiled at the Academia Sinica. Libraries in the US have difficulty subscribing to this, since it is handled more as an exchange database, and not many libraries have anything to exchange. Martin was asked to write to the AS on behalf of the Society for Ming Studies, to see whether access could be improved. Peter Bol (Harvard) told the group that individuals are welcome to come to the Harvard-Yenching Library to use the Ming Shi lu database if available there; subsequent checking has ascertained it is indeed available there in addition to at the California system libraries. Other projects announced briefly were a project at Minnesota (Su Chen) on Ming gazetteers, and the two complementary GIS projects under way at Harvard and the Academia Sinica.
  8. Soren Edgren (Princeton) presented a review of Quanming fensheng fenxian keshukao compiled by Du Xinfu and Du Tongshu (Beijing: Xianzhuang shuju, 2001). Important flaws were pointed out, with some suggestions on how it still could be useful. The hope was expressed that this review would be published in Ming Studies.
  9. People were again urged to post more items of interest, including books and conference reports, on the Ming list; clearly, people are appreciative of the efforts. Items do NOT have to be new. As an example to follow was cited Tthe Europe in China list. was cited as an example to follow.
  10. The floor was then opened for a lively discussion on topics to be discussed in future general sessions, especially regarding invitations to or joint sessions with other groups, both within Chinese Studies (other dynasties; more subject-specific groups: the Song-Yuan group was mentioned as perhaps the most obvious candidate, and could include discussions of the Song-Yuan-Ming transitions book) and outside (World History). The board committee members will take this upon themselves; suggestions are welcome. Topics could range from “what do you miss in Ming Studies” to “what do you wish Ming scholars would pay more attention to in your field”, but we should also feel free to ask the same questions of them. Also more interest was expressed in wider educational issues.

The meeting concluded at approximately 9:00 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Peter Ditmanson, Secretary for the Society of Ming Studies

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