Dear Colleagues:
I hope you are doing well and that you, your families, and loved ones are weathering the storm.
We have members who live and work in some areas that have been extremely hard-hit by the covid-19 pandemic, and I hope all of you have been able to create a system of shelter-in-place that is sustainable for as long as these policies remain necessary.
A big thank-you is owed to Peter Kitlas, for his editing of the Spring issue of the SNAP Bulletin, as well as to all the contributors. The creation of this level of content under the circumstances is extraordinary. I hope everyone enjoys reading this new issue.
There are a couple SNAP announcements I'd like to make, both of which serve as beacons of good news:
The University of California Humanities Research Institute awarded Camilo Gómez-Rivas and Andrew Devereux a conference grant to help support a SNAP event they plan to hold in February of 2021 at UC-Santa Cruz. The conference will focus on sensory experience in the western Mediterranean, spanning the premodern to the modern eras. Sensoria will be construed broadly, but particular attention will be paid to soundscapes, musical traditions, foodways, as well as the ways in which people have experienced phenomena such as religious pilgrimage and ecstasy.
In a second piece of good news, Marta Albalá Pelegrín, Andrew Devereux, Hussein Fancy, and Mayte Green-Mercado were awarded an AIMS conference grant to hold a conference at the AIMS center in Morocco, the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). The conference will take place in July 2021, and will look at various processes of migration and displacement in the western Mediterranean region from the medieval to the modern eras. While the interdisciplinary conference will privilege human migration, we will also devote attention to the movement and transmission of material objects, technologies, ideas, etc.
The many obvious variables at play make conference planning a challenge at the moment, but please stay tuned for further information pertaining to both of these SNAP events in the months ahead.
In the meantime, please continue to share reading recommendations, syllabi, etc., through the SNAP google group.
Wishing all of you much patience and fortitude in the weeks and months ahead.
Be well,
Andrew