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Report on the 2011 Annual Meeting:

The 2011 annual meeting of the NACBS, which has just concluded, was a sparkling success.   Registered participants numbered 367, making it one of the most popular and successful meetings in recent years.   Those on the program included at least 37 scholars from British institutions, five from Australia, and one from France.   Some of the most distinguished scholars in the field of British studies were present; so too were a number of graduate students, 15 of whom received travel funding from the NACBS Stern fund.  The program offered 56 separate panels on a vast array of topics, periods, and places, providing a showcase of cutting-edge scholarship for all interests and tastes.  There were two stimulating plenary addresses, one by Pat Thane (Kings College London) on “Happy Families? Varieties of Family Life in Twentieth-Century Britain,” and the other by Thomas Cogswell (University of California, Riverside) on “The Duke’s Two Bodies: Politics and Political Culture in Early Stuart England.”  In addition, Philippa Levine (University of Texas at Austin) gave a presidential address on “Naked Truths: Bodies, Knowledge and the Erotics of Colonial Power.”

The conference was as socially convivial as it was intellectually stimulating.  The receptions on Friday and Saturday evenings were crowded with talkative conference participants, who then packed local restaurants and bars.  The weather in Denver was ideal, with clear skies and unseasonably balmy temperatures, and the facilities and services provided by the Sheraton Hotel were excellent.  Special thanks must go to Marjorie Levine-Clark (University of Colorado Denver) and Andrew Muldoon (Metropolitan State College of Denver), the local arrangements team who did so much to make the meeting such a success.  Next year we converge in Montreal, another appealing venue.  I hope to see you there.

The following prizes were presented at the Saturday awards reception:  the John Ben Snow Prize for the best book written about the period prior to 1800 went to Arianne Chernock for Men and the Making of Modern British Feminism (Stanford University Press).  The Albion Prize for the best book on the post-1800 period went to Elaine Hadley, Living Liberalism: Practical Citizenship in Mid-Victorian Britain (University of Chicago Press).   Susan Pedersen’s “Getting Out of Iraq—in 1932,” which appeared in the American Historical Review won the Love Prize for the year’s best article.  Honorable mention went to Amy Whipple, ‘Into every home, into every body: Organicism and anti-Statism in the British Anti-Fluoridation Movement, 1952-60’, Twentieth Century British History.   Stephanie Koscak (Indiana University) won the NACBS-Huntington Library Fellowship for her project, “Multiplying Pictures for the Public: Reproducing the English Monarch, c. 1649-1780.”   Dissertation Fellowship: Ryan Bibler (University of Virginia) was awared the NACBS Dissertation Fellowship for his project, “Extension and Adaptation of European Legal Forms to the English Atlantic World (c. 1550-1700).”  The Dissertation Travel Grant went to Samantha Sagui (Fordham University) for her project, “Law, Order, and the Development of Urban Policing in Late Medieval England.”  
President Levine was also pleased to announce that the Albion Prize is to be renamed next year the Stansky Prize in honor of the distinguished and beloved historian (and past president of the NACBS), Peter Stansky.

Dane Kennedy
NACBS President