THE ANNUAL MEETING FOR 2003

The 61st annual meeting of the Southeastern Renaissance Conference will be held on Friday and Saturday, April 23rd and 24th, 2004 at Duke University in Durham.  We have promise of the temperate spring, warm hostpitality from our most genieal host, Leigh DeNeef, and an exciting gathering of Renaissance scholars from across the country.  All interested colleagues from across the disciplines are invited to submit papers and attend our most congenial meeting. There are no registration fees for SRC meetings and  membership in SRC IS $17.50.  The Conference HOTEL  will be the Courtyard by Marriott (@$79) and revervations can be made at 919-309-1500 by March 23.

OFFICERS for 2004: Barbara J. Baines (North Carolina State U), Robert Entzminger, Vice-President (Hendrix College U), Gerald Snare, Secretary-Treasurer (Tulane U), M. Thomas Hester and Christopher Cobb, Editors of  Renaissance Papers  (North Carolina State U).

CALLS FOR PAPERS:  an invitation to submit papers for the annual meeting is always extended to all interested persons (inside or outside the Southeast) who wish to become members of the SRC, and is issued (usually) from September 1  extending to January 15. Reading time for these papers is twenty minutes. 

SUBMISSIONS:  Papers should be submitted in duplicate to the President, Barbara J. Baines, Department of English, North Carolina State U., P.O. Box 8105, Raleigh  NC 27695-8105.  Papers submitted to the President are automatically considered for publication in Renaissance Papers even if they are not accepted for oral presentation at the annual meeting.

FOR INFORMATION:  write to Gerald Snare, Sec.-Treas., SRC, Department of English, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118; E-mail: snare@tulane.edu or (esp. during the summer) ghstenor@fastband.com   Telephone: (504)865-5585 (office) and (504) 892-9475 (home).

FUTURE ANNUAL MEETINGS:  2004: Duke U in Durham, NC.   2005: U of Tennessee in Knoxville (Allen Carroll, Host).

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SOUTHEASTERN RENAISSANCE CONFERENCE

SRC is a unique conference not only as an institution of some age, but in how it works.  The annual meeting is intentional in drawing scholars from  all the disciplines of the era and in not confining them to separate, thematic sessions:  there are no concurrent sessions and the whole conference is in session for all papers.  The audience thus is varied, always sizeable, and the discussion after every three papers makes for a lively, engaging, and helpful experience.  The object is to encourage an amiable, critical exchange over the whole time of the meeting, at morning coffee, in the breaks for refreshment, at the cocktail reception, at the banquet, at the evening's entertianment, and at nightcaps.  All papers submitted are triple-read by the President and the editors of Renaissance Papers.  The number of presentations remains intentionally modest, some dozen to fourteen.

The SRC meets annually in even numbered years at its spondoring institutions (in this order): Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of South Carolina at Columbia, and North Carolina State University.  In odd-numbered years, the Conference is invited to another institution in the Southeast.  The officers of the organization are elected annually for one-year terms except for the Editor of Renaissance Papers and the Secretary-Tjreasurer, wh serve five-year terms.  The President and Editor arrange the presentations for the annual meeting from papers submitted for the meeting and consult on the articles to appear in the journal from submissions to the meeting and from the membership.  The Vice-President normally is elected President for the following year.  The Secretary-Treasurer takes responsibility for the correspondence of the Conference, the budget, the annual reports, the programs and announcements, and the minutes.  All four officers meet as the Advisory Council annually at the South Atlantic Modern Language Convention to conduct business that is not dealt with at the annual meeting.

THE HISTORY OF SRC

The Southeastern Renaissance Conference was founded in 1943 by Allan Gilbert of Duke University and Hardin Craig of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  During World War II, both the Modern Language Association and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association had cancelled their annual meetings "for the duration."  As reported in the South Atlantic Bulletin  [IX, No.3, 1] in December of 1943: "On Saturday, November 27, under the leadership of Hardin Craig of the University of North Carolina and Allan H. Gilbert of Duke University, more than thirty teachers and graduate students from Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Greensboro, St. Mary's School, Greensboro College, and Western Carolina Teachers College attended an all-day meeting at Duke University."  Between 1943 and 1956, the Conference met alternately at Chapel Hill and Duke under a variety of names: Renaissance Meeting, Conference on the Renaissance, Renaissance Meeting in the Southeastern States, Annual Southeastern Renaissance Meeting.  The group was formally organized as the Southeastern Renaissance Conference in the spring of 1956 at South Carolina at Columbia, with Allan Gilbert as its first elected President, W. L. Wiley (Chapel Hill) as first Vice-President, and Frank Hoskins (East Carolina) as first Secretary-Treasurer.  The journal of the Conference was first published as Renaissance Papers 1954 , edited by Allan Gilbert and Hennig Cohen, and sponsored  (as were the volumes from 1955 to 1957) by North Carolina, Duke, and South Carolina.  The editorship passed into the hands of George Walton Williams (Duke) in 1958 and has continued yearly since then under various editors.  The Southeastern Renaissance Conference is an original, constituent member of the Renaissance Society of America, having been present to help found that organization in 1954.