A Note on the Presidential Address

A Note on the Presidential Address Sharon P. Holland (bio) In the first iteration of the American Studies Association, the presidential address was a genre yet to be created. After twenty presidents, the ASA elected its first woman, Lois W. Banner (1986–87). The first version of that thing called the "presidential address" came about when Alice Kessler-Harris published a version of her address ("Cultural Locations") as an essay in the September 1992 issue of American Quarterly. The first published address, as an address, was in 1993, when the remarks ("Loose Change") of then president Cathy N. Davidson were published in the fall of that next year. It is hard to tell from JSTOR data exactly when the publication of presidential addresses with commentary from interlocutors arrived on the scene, but I distinctly remember being in the audience in 1997, when the first Black woman to hold the position of president, Mary Helen Washington, gave her address ("Disturbing the Peace"). It was a difficult time, as colleagues from across the country were not too many days into mourning the sudden loss of Lora Romero, our colleague and friend. I also remember that when that issue of AQ arrived on my desk the following fall, it came with responses from two colleagues. Since then, the presidential address has morphed and changed, and given the flux and shape of the association at this present moment, it seems fitting to introduce another change. Though I gave my address ("Intramural Acts") to ASA members present in Montreal in 2023, I had originally intended to release it as several brief podcasts over three days at the conference. That was an ambitious goal that proved more daunting than expected. But, in keeping with my original vision, I am opting not to publish my address in AQ, though a hard copy will be available to those who inquire about it (please email me at sph@sharonpholland.com). I would like to start a new tradition, perhaps. I will be in dialogue with Dr. David Kyuman Kim about my address in a podcast produced by the ASA and released in the summer of 2024. I am hoping to reach a wider audience with this digital/voice medium. It will be available on the ASA website and through other podcast platforms. My other hope is that future presidents will do the same, thus changing established tradition, and reorienting our public-facing [End Page vii] profile, as our constituencies and our future are not just "in here" when we gather together, but "out there" among beings we have yet to touch with our message of intellectual and academic freedom, restorative justice, and abolition. [End Page viii] Sharon P. Holland President Townsend Ludington Distinguished Professor of American Studies Chapel Hill, North Carolina February 2024 Sharon P. Holland Sharon P. Holland (she/her) is president of the American Studies Association (2022–25). She is also the Townsend Ludington Distinguished Professor in American Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She served as chair of the department from July 2020 to July 2022. Her third monograph, an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life, is an investigation of the hum/animal distinction, hum:animal relation, and the place of discourse on blackness within those theoretical discussions. You can sample the text by clicking on the following link: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/PubMaterials/978-1-4780-2507-8_601.pdf. You can see her work on food, writing, and all things equestrian on her blog, https://theprofessorstable.org/. Her next book project comes out of her decades-long work in food studies and is a meditation on the work of famed food writer MFK Fisher. Professor Holland is the author of Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity (Duke University Press, 2000), which won the Lora Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association in 2002. She is also coauthor of a collection of transatlantic Afro-Native criticism with Tiya Miles titled Crossing Waters / Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country (Duke University Press, 2006). Holland is also responsible for bringing a feminist classic, The Queen Is in the Garbage, by Lila Karp, to the...

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