Dear MAP Members: September 27, 2015
I write today to call your attention to a number of important matters, most notably our conference next year, March 31-April 2, 2016. As you know, this meeting will mark our association’s 50th anniversary, and will be held at the place where it was founded in 1966, the University of California, Davis. All of us on the MAP Council are very excited as the planning continues for this event, as are the hard-working members of the Local Arrangements Committee at UCD. Our theme next year will be “A Global Middle Ages.”
I speak for a good many of us in MAP when I say that ours is an extraordinary organization. It has been an honor and a pleasure to be associated with this organization for many years. At our conferences each spring I always find old friends, impressive new colleagues, and an assemblage of excellent sessions, all in a friendly and welcoming ambiance. No matter where I go for professional meetings, the annual MAP meeting always stands out—at the risk of sounding corny, it seems like “coming home.” We exhort all of you who are receiving this message: please make every effort to come next year yourself, and reach out as well to everyone you know who has ever been a member, and to newcomers, so we can make this our best-attended conference ever. Among our fellow attendees will be founding members of the association, including James J. Murphy of UCD, several past MAP presidents and officers, and the usual contributors who range from fledgling graduate students to established experts. Our plenary speakers, finally, will be two superb scholars whom we’re proud to have as MAP members, Prof. Monica Green (ASU) and Prof. H. A. Kelly (UCLA). So please help us put out the word: come home to MAP next year.
I will remind you of some essential dates: the deadline for submission of paper abstracts for the 2016 conference is October 30, 2015. And the deadline for the John F. Benton Prize—for conference travel funding—is January 5, 2016. The deadline to submit essays for the MAP Founders’ Prize—which provides up to three awards ($500/$250/$250) for the best revised papers originally presented by graduate students at our annual meeting—has been extended to December 1. Please see our website for details on all three of these items: https://www.medievalpacific.org/
Finally: our colleague Prof. John Ott, MAP Treasurer, will be writing you soon with a fundraising appeal. I will take this opportunity to support his efforts by asking that you all please check if you are up to date on membership dues. MAP remains one of the most inexpensive professional societies in the country, but last year our dues payments were extremely spotty, even among conference attendees. John will make this pitch more eloquently than I, but please do renew your membership on our website soon.
I look forward to seeing all of you at UC Davis next spring. Wishing you all a peaceful and productive fall term—
Michael Hanly
MAP President (2014-2016)