Dear Colleagues,

It's my pleasure to announce the formation of a new International Alain Chartier Society which seeks to foster international collaboration and research on the author and royal secretary. The Society's activities will include sponsored sessions, business meetings, and convivial social gatherings at the Kalamazoo Congress and the establishment of a website and email list to keep members apprised of the latest news and important events.  A list of the Executive Committee follows. 

Please mark your calendars for the 2009 Kalamazoo Congress, where the Society will sponsor a session, Alain Chartier:  Tradition and Innovation.  Abstracts, along with an abstract cover sheet, available on the Kalamazoo website, are due by September 15, 2008.  Inquiries about the panel and submissions should be addressed to Daisy Delogu at ddelogu@uchicago.edu.  At the Congress, we will also hold our second annual Business Meeting and vin d'honneur, provisionally scheduled for Friday at 5:15pm, and a Society Dinner, date and location TBA. 

Membership in the Society is free and we encourage you to send your contact information to our President, Joan McRae at jmcrae@hsc.edu to help in establishing a master email list for the Society.  We soon hope to launch a web site including announcements about items of interest to scholars of Chartier and a bibliography. 

The Executive Committee includes :

Joan McRae, President and Webmaster
Emma Cayley, Vice President
Susan Dudash, Secretary

We also wish to express our gratitude to all those who participated in our first successful meeting, and in particular to our Charter Members and Executive Officers:  Emma Cayley, Daisy Delogu, Susan Dudash, Ashby Kinch, Irit Kleiman, Joan McRae, Deobrah McGrady, and Janice Zinser. 

We would also be grateful if you could circulate and post this announcement widely.  We hope to provide accurate information to as many colleagues as possible, but if we have made any errors or omissions, please do let us know.

Thank you.  We look forward to see you at Kalamazoo 2009!

Submitted on behalf of the International Alain Chartier Society,

Susan J. Dudash,
Assistant Professor of French, Fordham University and
Mellon Fellow and Senior Research Associate, University of Notre Dame