The APT Newsletter
No. 6, August 2004
THE APT CONFERENCE 2004 -- PRELIMINARY PROGRAM
29-31 OCTOBER, COLORADO COLLEGE, COLORADO SPRINGSThe Program Committee for the Association for Political Theory is pleased to announce publication of the preliminary program for the Association's second conference, to be held at The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 29-31 October 2004. You can view the preliminary program on the Association's website, by clicking on "APT Conferences" in the left toolbar of the APT Gateway home page. To pre-register for the conference, print the registration form and follow the instructions on it.
The conference will start with registration from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, 29 October 2004. Six sessions, each with four concurrent panels will follow over the course of Friday afternoon and all day Saturday. Following last year's precedent, the Program Committee has arranged the conference schedule to maximize opportunities for conversation among scholars. Sessions will run for two hours to ensure that the audience can question panelists and that panelists can respond fully to the audience and each other. Breaks between sessions will last 30 minutes, with coffee, drinks, and snacks served, and with mingling encouraged. On Friday afternoon, the Political Science Department at Colorado College will host a reception, followed by dinner; and on Saturday, a luncheon will be held, with another reception closing the sessions late Saturday afternoon. A business meeting open to all members will be held on Sunday, 31 October 2004, from 9:30 to 10:15 a.m. Attendees will be responsible for lunch on Friday before the conference begins and dinner on Saturday.
Thanks are due to Program Committee members for their contributions to the conference's organization. Co-chair Ed Wingenbach deserves special praise for volunteering to help manage the effort. The members of the committee are:
Simona Goi, Assistant Professor, Calvin College
Edward J. Harpham, Professor, University of Texas at Dallas
Michael James, Assistant Professor, Bucknell University
Elizabeth Markovits, Graduate Student, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Amy McCready, Associate Professor, Bucknell University
Dennis McEnnerney, Assistant Professor, SUNY Oneonta / Colorado College (co-chair)
Dan Sabia, Associate Professor, University of South Carolina
Gregory Streich, Associate Professor, Central Missouri State University
Ed Wingenbach, Associate Professor, University of Redlands (co-chair)For more information on the conference, The Colorado College, and Colorado Springs, visit the APT Gateway website.
APT TO MOVE THIS FALL TO COLORADO COLLEGE
Though the Program Committee worked diligently the spring and summer to organize this year's conference, news about the conference has not been disseminated as quickly as one might wish, in large part because of complications arising from the Association's impending move from our current host institution, SUNY Oneonta, to our new one, The Colorado College, which coincidentally will host this year's conference. In March -- long after planning for the conference was underway -- the partner of APT Co-Founder Dennis McEnnerney was offered a senior appointment in history at Colorado College. As part of that offer, a position in philosophy and general studies was created for Dennis, and the College agreed to begin supporting the APT Gateway website this fall. The resulting complications of moving across the country (including changing offices, computers, software, and websites) have delayed significantly Dennis' work, both on the Program Committee and on membership matters. Dennis would like to offer apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this delay.
For at least the next month, the APT Gateway website will remain at SUNY Oneonta, and the Association's e-mail address will continue to be apt@coloradocollege.edu. Sometime this fall, the website will move to the Colorado College server. When the move is complete, all members and conference participants will be notified of our changes of address.
The Association would like thank SUNY Oneonta, and especially Diana Moseman of the SUNY Oneonta Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center, for their generous support of the APT Gateway website.
MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY PUBLISHED
One of the many contributions that Diana Moseman made to APT was helping Dennis McEnnerney develop a secure portion of the Association's website, on which you may now find directory listing all members who have agreed to publish their names, affiliations, and (in most cases) contact information. If you have not visited that portion of the website yet, you may want to take a look. Click on "Member Resources," which you should find near the bottom of the left toolbar on the APT Gateway website home page. You will then be asked to log in, using your membership number and e-mail address. Each member should have received a membership number in the confirmation e-mail message sent when his or her membership application was approved.
If you did not keep a copy of the message with your membership number, don't worry! You can retrieve your membership number on line. Click on "Member Resources," which should take you to the log-in page for the secure portion of the website. On the log-in page, you will find a link at the bottom of the page entitled, "What is my MemberID?" Click on that link, supply the e-mail address that you gave when you joined and a message will be sent to that e-mail address with your membership number. If you still have trouble, just write to Dennis McEnnerney at the Association's e-mail address (currently apt@coloradocollege.edu).
Once you log in, you will be taken to an index page showing items on the secure portion of the website. Currently, two items are listed. One is special offer from the journal, Contemporary Political Theory, entitling members to a discount subscription. The other is the new membership directory for the Association. Over time, we expect to add other items of interest to APT members.
The membership directory lists alphabetically all members who have agreed to have their names and affiliations published. In most cases, members have also listed their areas of interest in political theory. These listing may be a good resource for anyone putting together conference panels, planning journal forums, or searching for specialists on a particular topic. In addition, the directory provides a great overview of who is working in the field, including the up-and-coming generation of political theorists and philosophers now attending graduate school.
Most members have agreed to list their contact information (which may include mailing address, e-mail address, website address, and telephone numbers). To find contact information for a particular person, you will have to click on his or her name. The contact information should then appear in a pop-up window.
Members should know that Diana and Dennis designed the directory with security in mind. One can only gain access to the directory by logging in, with a valid member ID and matching e-mail address. Contact information can only be obtained by clicking on a pop-up window for a particular member, which means that there is no easy way to copy contact information for all of our members at once. Also, the individual pop-up windows make it simple enough for members wanting to be listed as members but wishing to keep their contact information private to opt out of listing that information (or some part of it). In cases where a member has chosen to keep all contact information private, the pop-up window should just say, "Contact information for this member is private."
While we have taken reasonable precautions to secure our website and our membership information, we cannot promise absolute security. It is always possible that some hacker may find a way to break into our website. However, we hope that reasonable precautions will minimize that possibility. Also, we suspect that, valuable as we all know our work is, a listing of the names and contact information for faculty and graduate students in political theory, to spammers and hackers, is probably not worth a great deal of effort to obtain!
Members should also know that they can change how their membership information is listed, or not listed, as the case may be. To make changes, simply log into the "Member Resources" portion of the website and then click on "APT Membership Directory" to open the directory. Near the top of the directory page, you will find a link entitled, "Change My Information." Click on that link. The APT Membership Update Form will then open. Complete and submit the form. Once we have a chance to review your changes, we will send you an e-mail message confirming that your entry as been revised. Please note that, as a further security measure, your entry will automatically be removed from the Membership Directory until we have had a chance to review and confirm your changes.
MEMBERSHIP CONTINUES TO GROW
New members continue to enroll in Association. As of late July 2004, the APT has a confirmed membership of 285, with an additional 20 applications pending. Visit our website and view the Membership Directory to see most of the people who have joined. Remember, some have chosen to keep their memberships private.
Membership in the Association is free and available to any serious scholars of political thought. In order to weed out the occasional crank or spammer seeking to gain access to our membership records or other website resources, the Association seeks to confirm the following information about prospective members: 1) that the applicant is serious scholar of political thought; and 2) that the applicant's e-mail address is legitimate. Most applicants have no problem demonstrating their scholarly credentials. Affiliation with or an advanced degree from any college, university, or research institute in an area related to political theory or political philosophy is sufficient. In most cases, such affiliations are easily confirmed via the website of applicant's institution. Those websites usually also provide the Association with an easy way to confirm applicants' e-mail addresses.
Not all applications are easily confirmed via a website, however. Some institutions do not list graduate students by name, and a number of institutions do not provide public e-mail address directories. A few institutions lack even the most basic information (such as faculty names) on their websites. Some applicants use e-mail addresses not located on their campus server. Independent scholars, in addition, often lack an easy way to demonstrate their scholarly credentials.
To maintain the integrity of our membership, such applications may be delayed while the Association attempts to confirm information provided by prospective members. We seek commonsensical solutions to such problems, such as contacting department secretaries to confirm affiliations and e-mail addresses, or (in the case of independent scholars, especially) asking for a recommendation from a recognized scholar in the field.
If approval of your application was or is delayed, we ask your understanding. The APT e-mail address -- like so many other e-mail addresses -- has been bombarded by spam over the last year. We also have had a few membership applications that clearly were not serious or that were made by apparent spammers. We want to keep membership open and free to all serious scholars of political thought. One price of our policy, though, is the occasional spurious application, which it takes some time and a number of simple precautions to weed out.
A final note about membership: the growth of APT has also led to a somewhat surprising result -- undergraduate applications. To date we have received three or four applications from undergraduate students, leading to discussion among members of the Governance Committee about our membership policies, which are currently informal. After some consideration, we have decided, for now, to welcome undergraduates as affiliates and to add them to an undergraduate mailing list. Students on that list will receive copies of the APT Newsletter, but they will not be given usernames or passwords to log onto the secure part of the website (which includes the membership directory). They also will not be listed in the Membership Directory.
GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE BEGINS WORK
Following our Inaugural Conference, a Governance Committee was formed to develop proposals for the Association's governance and to plan for APT's eventual organization as a not-for-profit educational corporation. Andrew Murphy of Christ College, Valparaiso University chairs the committee, working closely with the Co-Founders, Emily Hauptmann of Western Michigan University and Dennis McEnnerney of SUNY Oneonta / Colorado College. Randy LeBlanc of the University of Texas at Tyler, Johnny Goldfinger of Indiana University -- Purdue University Indianapolis, and Darren Walhof of Grand Valley State University also serve on the committee.
The Committee hopes to have a draft constitution completed in time for debate and possible approval at the Colorado College conference in October. Darren Walhof has already prepared a preliminary draft, which Andy Murphy has begun circulating for comments among the committee members.
Once work on the constitution is completed, the Committee will likely turn to other policies and issues concerning the Association's governance.
THE APT CONFERENCE 2004 -- GENERAL INFORMATION
The 2004 meeting of the Association will be held on the campus of Colorado College, situated near the base of Pike's Peak and the Rocky Mountains' Front Range, in the gracious North End neighborhood of Colorado Springs. The lively downtown district of Colorado Springs, with many restaurants, cafés, and bars is just a short walk or drive away. A little further away is The Garden of the Gods, a city park and National Natural Landmark that Frommer's describes as:
One of the West's unique geological sites, the 1,300-acre Garden of the Gods is a giant rock garden composed of spectacular red sandstone formations sculpted by rain and wind over millions of years. Located where several life zones and ecosystems converge, the beautiful city-run park harbors a variety of plant and animal communities. [from Frommers.com]
The Colorado College is the leading liberal arts college of the Rocky Mountain region, established in 1874 to bring classical New England scholarship to the West. Today the college is best known for its block plan, under which all of its 1900 students take and all 180 faculty members teach one small intensive class at a time. Each "block" lasts 3 1/2 weeks and is the equivalent of a semester course.
THE APT CONFERENCE 2004
REGISTRATION, LODGING, TRANSPORTATIONConference registration forms will be sent to all attendees. A copy is also available on the APT Gateway website here. Registration fees will be $85 for faculty and fully-employed persons and $50 for graduate students and persons not fully employed. Watch your in box for more information if you are on the program.
Conference lodging will be at the Le Baron Hotel, located at the edge of the downtown district of Colorado Springs, just under one mile from the campus and conference meeting rooms. Rooms at the Le Baron will be a modest $60 per night, single or double occupancy, and will include a full breakfast and free shuttles to and from the Colorado Springs Airport. The College will also run shuttles between the campus and the hotel for those who prefer not to walk. Information on how to book a room at the Le Baron Hotel has been sent to all attendees and posted on the Association's website.
The Colorado Springs Airport is served by all major airlines (American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, and United), as well as a number of smaller airlines (Allegiant, America West, and Mesa). Non-stop flights are available from most major airline hubs, and the airport is only 20 minutes from the campus. Colorado Springs is also only 75 miles from the new Denver International Airport, where one could rent a car and drive to Colorado Springs. Ground transportation is possible from the Denver International Airport, though the cost (currently $45 one-way to the LeBaron Hotel on Peak Transit's Colorado Springs Shuttle) and the time involved (105-120 minutes) are likely to make flying through that airport less cost-effective or convenient than flying directly to Colorado Springs for most people.
THE APT CONFERENCE 2004
PRE-CIRCULATION REQUIREMENTThe Program Committee would like to remind all conference participants that all papers for this year's meeting will be pre-circulated. As the Call for Papers stated:
Applicants should note that the Program Committee will require all accepted participants to submit their completed papers no later than Monday, October 4, 2004 to a password-protected archive on the APT website. Papers will then be available to registered conference participants, as well as to panel chairs and discussants. Failure to submit a complete paper by that date may lead to removal from the program.
Participants giving papers or talks will be required to submit digital versions of their papers, which will likely be posted on the protected portion of the Association's website. Details on exactly how papers are to be submitted and how they will be posted will be sent to all participants by the end of August.
Watch your in boxes or visit the Association's website for more information on the conference!
-Dennis McEnnerney & Emily Hauptmann, Co-Founders
Latest Revision: 11 August 2004