Dear Feasties,

 

I am writing to update you all on our projects and updates.  As you know, I am the new Chair—after occupying the role of Grad Student Rep, founder of the Mentoring project, member of Program Committee, At-Large, and Diversity Chair.  I am following Asha, who did an amazing job pulling the organization back from imminent financial crash.  (This is a low-key way of reminding you all to renew your membership in the off year, which is based on a sliding scale).  The new steering committee will be working diligently to shore up and sustain the health and vitality of FEAST in the wake of her quick actions.  To do so, we have developed the following courses of action. 

 

First, we will be implementing a few new projects:

1)    We will host a one day conference based on the work of Ami.  We will hold this during our regular October conference time since we have pushed our conference one year.  I’ll start sending out info on this in a luke-warm minute.   

2)    I will be working with Lauren Freeman on putting together an APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy that will stem from this conference on Ami’s work. 

3)    We will be starting a new newsletter, similar to this, that informs members of the ongoings and health of the organization to provide transparency and greater membership involvement.  We are undecided about the regularity of the newsletter.  I suspect we may do once a year until we get more balls rolling and then do one semi-annually or quarterly.  The newsletter will include: budget reports, endowment reports, graduate student highlights, activist highlights, new hire announcements, promotion announcements, and general updates on our projects and conferences.  This will not be the kind of newsletter such as those of the APA; it will legit just be something like this or a grade or two higher in fanciness. 

4)    As you know (I know I know!), we have created the new publications list serve that is intended only for the purpose of sharing new research.  The reason why we created a separate list serve is because not everyone is interested in being alerted to any and every publication.  But some of us want to know every single new detail so this list serve gives us a place to stalk each other’s research without having to deal with contexts or apologies for tooting one’s own horn.  In fact, this list serve is intended for you to toot your own horn so toot toot away!    

5)    We will be creating a FEAST yearbook, which we’re all very excited about.  Have you ever had exchanges with someone on the list serve and gotten to know them but have no idea what they look like?  Have you attended the conference a bunch of times and know someone’s face but cannot for the life of you remember their name (and are totally horrified you’ll be found out when you’re chatting over afternoon snacks!)?  Have you ever looked at the program and seen the name of someone who’s talk you wanted to attend but missed and now you want to seek them out for a chat?  Well, have no fear!  The FEAST yearbook is here to save the day!  The yearbook will be voluntary but HIGHLY encourage for conference attendees (and required for the SC, obviously).  It will include: photo, name, affiliation, status, AOS, and your favorite philosophy quote written by a woman. It will be searchable by name but also browsable so that you can hunt down someone’s photo to learn their name.  We will have to decide whether or not to make this available only to paid members and conference participants.  It will depend on what is required to manage submissions.  Having it open to a thousand people might undermine the purpose.   

 

Second, we aim to create a few items of swag to help generate income to provide cushion in times such as these or when unexpected expenses not related to the usual conference budget arises.  Don’t worry, it’ll be cute. 

 

Third, the main reason we revived our 501c status is because we want to create an endowment.  The endowment would serve to provide funding to students, junior scholars, adjuncts, independent scholars, and activists in more substantive ways and to yield income to make awards.  We will begin the fundraising efforts soon and some of you may receive personal letters from us requesting larger donations (so don’t be surprised).  Feel free to donate fat checks before we get to you! 

 

Relatedly, we are deliberating whether we want to move horizontally from our current 501c4 to 501c3.  The reason we did c4 is because this was the original status from a while ago.  But we may want to move to c3 so that we can apply for grants.  If and how soon we do this will depend on the amount of labor that is required to do so.  As we saw with Asha and David, there was a substantial amount of work required to reestablish our status so if moving over requires the same amount, we will hold off. 

 

Fifth, we will be fully revamping our website.  And by “we”, I actually mean Jenn.  We will be moving to a new platform and redesigning the pages.  Each current page will be filled out in more depth.  The new website will also contain an origins stories page and the yearbook.  The yearbook page will have the templates open for individuals to enter themselves.  I have big dreams about having the origins stories animated but who knows how hard this would be.  Also, this is a time to remind you to go over and review our updated mission statement, if you have not yet seen it.  This is very important to the future of FEAST and is the grounding motivation for our endowment aspirations. 

 

Sixth, just an update on the changing nature of the steering committee itself.  As you’ve seen, Asha created the new position of the Development Officer, which David occupies.  David will work closely with our Treasurer, who is technically more important than all the rest of us.  We have also created a Social Media officer, who is Laura Kane.  She will be working close with Jen, our Website guru.  We will also be developing a position for a Secretary, which is currently being subbed by Shannon and for whom we are all so grateful.  I will also be moving to eliminate the term “committee” from the SC position titles because that’s just confusing, especially for people who are running for the positions and then they find out that they ARE the committee.  Upon this approval, we will allow for the creation of committees when needed in an ad hoc fashion.  Obviously this means we will be working quite intensely on reformulating our bylaws, which will then be voted on by the membership. 

Finally, we will move to formalize and institutionalize the safe space/ reporting/ inclusiveness/ and submission review practices we have been developing and implementing in relation to the conference to thwart harms to marginalized members and participants. 

I think that's it.

 

With much love and devotion,

FEAST Steering Committee

 

Also, forgive my typos; I am especially prone to these. 

 

Also also, please renew your memberships.  We’re still affordable in pandemic times!