From the President

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From the President

Gerry Canavan
Marquette University

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Thank you, thank you, thank you for a successful and stimulating SFRA21! It was an amazing conference, technical snafus and all, and it made me tremendously grateful to be a part of this community. People attending the business meeting and the banquet have heard my thanks already, possibly twice, but I wanted to extend one more round of appreciation to Graham Murphy for organizing such a terrific event; to Keren Omry for working such magic with the schedule; to everyone on the executive committee who pitched in in so many ways; to Carma Spence for her help with the website and design work; to the three amazing keynotes for their stellar presentations; to Aisha Matthews for her generous help both public-facing and behind-the scenes; to Lisa Yaszek, De Witt Kilgore, Isiah Lavender, and Taryne Taylor for the bracing and honest bias and belonging roundtable; to the panelists on the and to Ida Yoshinaga, Ali Sperling, and Bernie Mendoza for the terrific job workshop. I also wanted to extend some personal thanks to Lisa Yaszek, Isiah Lavender, Ida Yoshinaga, Sonja Fritszsche, Taryne Taylor, Sherryl Vint, and Bodhi Chattopadhyay, among others, for their counsel and good advice.

One of the things we’ve learned from this strange year is that some of the structures that govern SFRA are no longer working as well as we’d like them to, especially with regard to representation of its many different stakeholder groups. Following up on our robust conversation at the business meeting, we are exploring some possible changes to the composition of the executive committee that we hope to speak with the membership more about soon. Some of these changes will be customary; others of them would potentially require a vote of the membership to alter the bylaws. But we will have a robust comment period before we do anything; we certainly want anything that happens to reflect the will of the entire group. Our goal is to promote an SFRA that better represents the diversity of its membership, in every sense.

In the meantime, thanks to all those who have stepped up to serve on the awards committees, and to those who will be standing for election to the executive board this fall. We are still looking for help with design work for the new plaques and trophies; if you have experience with this sort of 3D design, or know someone who does, please, reach out to me! We are also still looking for a US-based host for the 2023 conference; if you think your institution might be a good fit for an in-person conference, and think you have the capacity to work with the group to plan one, please, let me know! Thanks again to all those whose labor and generosity help make SFRA work.