PCA/ACA Election Statements

     Each year, the PCA/ACA nominating committee selected by the President of the PCA/ACA proposes a list of candidates to the membership for the various offices.  Only the selection of the new Vice President-Elect, who will become the President has two candidates running for the same office.  For the other positions, however, there is a provision for writing-in the name of candidates.  The statements appear below:

 

Ray Merlock: Professor, Communications, Univ. of South Carolina Upstate
Having known and worked with many of the talented and dedicated visionaries who have served as past Presidents of the Popular Culture/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA), I feel great humility at even being nominated for this post.  I attended my first PCA conference as a graduate student in 1973 when three faculty members from Ohio University accompanied by two grad students drove to the National PCA conference held that year in Indianapolis.  I recall dashing from panels on film to ones on comic books to ones on detective fiction to ones on the Western, on and on, marveling at how knowledgeable, engrossing, and insightful the presenters were.  I recall the culture wars decades ago when an individual’s or a department’s mere interest in popular culture approaches or topics might be less than uniformly supported.
 During my years as a member of the Popular and the American Culture Associations, I have served as area chair (for various categories), as a member of the American Culture Governing Board, as a member of the Journal of American Culture editorial board, and have done whatever I could to invite colleagues and emerging scholars to deliver papers and become involved in the organization.  In terms of my own scholarship and creativity I have served a regional film reviewer on radio and television and for newspapers and have written extensively on the Western and on film.  I have also taken considerable comfort over the years in how the acceptance of Popular Culture as both worthwhile and indispensible has led to visible, notable, and ongoing academic, theoretical, methodological—and even socially significant-- changes.
In the post-Ray and Pat Browne era and following the retirements of many who built the organization, PCA/ ACA currently resides in a state of transition.  Recognizing and showing appreciation for long-time members and supporters should be seen as essential as is welcoming diverse new members, many of whom will be receiving the opportunity to present at a national conference for the first time and to form contacts that are apt to prove invaluable in their careers .  The stewardship of annual PCA/ACA awards remains an important function of the Board as does continued--perhaps even increased--liaison with academic journals and with both university presses and commercial publishing houses seeking articles and manuscripts related to popular culture studies.  It may also be advisable to ascertain whether the finalized conference program/schedule of sessions and events might be available earlier to accommodate attendees needing to make flight and hotel reservations and prepare institutional financial support requests.  There is much to be done with many issues worthy of consideration if we are to protect and enhance the legacy, the open-mindedness, and the legitimization of the associations that have meant so much to so many of us—both inside and outside of academia-- for so long.   

 

Joy Sperling: Associate Prof., Art History, Denison University

I am honored to be nominated for the presidency of the PCA/ACA. I have been a member of PCA/ACA for almost two decades and have been involved in almost every area of the organization. I have presented papers almost every year since 1994 and served as Area Chair for American Art and Architecture from 1997 to 2005. I have served as a board member for either ACA or the PCA/ACA for ten years; I served as Co-President of PCA/ACA, and I am currently serving as Vice President for Area Chairs.  I have also served on many of the organization’s committees for scholarship (including the Cawelti book Award, Toth book Award, Bode Award and the Jones Award), on the Marsden committee for international travel grants and the Sokol award committee. I also serve on the editorial board of The Journal of American Culture. Although trained as an art historian who works on visual culture, I have published in Popular and American Culture studies, including chapters in two volumes of the Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Culture (2007) edited by Gary Hoppenstand); contributed a chapter to Popular Culture Values and the Arts: Essays in Elitism versus Democratization (2008) edited by Ray Browne); and was co-editor (with David Sokol) of a special issue of The Journal of American Culture (2008) on American visual culture.
I have watched the PCA/ACA grow and develop over the last twenty years. I have followed the development of popular and American culture studies from the still relatively marginalized discourse of the late-1980s to a discipline that is asking some of the most pertinent and central questions in culture studies today.  I am eager to continue my participation in the ongoing transitions in this field of study and in the organization that has sponsored it.  I am dedicated to PCA/ACA because it honors, respects and continues the radical intellectual traditions of openness and willingness to respect all contributions to the intellectual discourse of popular culture studies.  These characteristics, essential and foundational to this organization and to Ray Browne’s vision for it, ensure that over time it will explore new intellectual territories, welcome new members into its generous ranks, and place the organization into the hands of yet another new generation of open-minded scholars. My hope is to encourage younger members of the organization to become involved in administration and to work with their more established peers to facilitate the vitality and future progress of the ACA/PCA.  My goal as PCA/ACA president would thus be to preserve the philosophical bases upon which the PCA/ACA was built while identifying, mentoring and involving younger members in the organization as the next generation of PCA/ACA administrators.
Being part of PCA/ACA is exhilarating and exciting. The papers presented at any of our conferences, whether national or regional, share an intellectual edginess, develop imaginative and oftentimes risky methodologies, and regularly lead us into offbeat, but thrilling new intellectual territory.

Vice Presidential Slate

Vice President for Area Chairs:
            Joe Hancock, Associate Professor, Drexel University

Vice President for Awards: 
Sally Sugarman, Professor Emeritus, Bennington College

 

Board Slate

Mike Borshuk:  Assistant Professor, Texas Tech University

Rosemarie Conforti: Assoc.  Professor, Southern Connecticut State University

Tom Kitts: Professor, St. Johns University

Tim Madigan: Assistant Professor, St. John Fisher College