NEWS

It is with great sadness that the S.P.S.C.V.A. reports the passing of the Society's former Secretary and longtime member, Richard Nunan. An obituary for Richard can be found here.

JANUARY 23, 2021

Dear SPSCVA colleagues,

The transition committee of the SPSCVA are very pleased to announce that Laura T. Di Summa has been appointed Editor of the journal Film and Philosophy. Please see both her call for papers for the journal and her call for papers for an upcoming workshop under the Film and Philosophy tab on this website.

MAY 5, 2020

Dear SPSCVA colleagues,

Below this message, please find our search announcement for a new permanent editor for the SPSCVA’s journal, Film and Philosophy. As I explained to all of you previously, Dan Flory has volunteered to take the position on an interim basis only, to insure that volume 25 comes out in a timely fashion in 2021. (See below.) But we are still going to need a longer-term appointment to replace Dan Flory, and to fill the void that Dan Shaw has left with his passing, in the form of a more permanent editor. So we are now soliciting nominees for that position. (Again, see attachment.) Applications will be reviewed by an ad-hoc search committee which I took the liberty of creating for the purpose of handling the organization’s and the journal’s transition to new leadership, as Dan Shaw had made no provisions for such an eventuality himself.

The members of this ad-hoc transition committee are all long-time members of the organization and present or past participants in leadership roles:

Dan Flory, Montana State U (Interim Editor, past President of the SPSCVA, and member, Editorial Board)

Christopher Grau, Clemson U, SC (current Vice President, SPSCVA)

Sander Lee, Keene State College, NH (member, Editorial Board, the SPSCVA’s original founder and first President, back in the 1990s)

Richard Nunan, College of Charleston, SC (current Secretary, SPSCVA) -- NOTE: Richard has resigned from this position.

Tom Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College, MA (member, Editorial Board)

We are also working in consultation with George Leaman of the Philosophy Documentation Center.

Finally, just a few reminders from recent emails I sent to each of you:

On Saturday, April 18, you received from me an announcement that Dan Flory has volunteered to serve as interim editor of Film and Philosophy, and you are most welcome to submit prospective articles to the journal for volume 25, until 30 June, 2020, at this new submission address: FilmPhilJournal@gmail.com

On Tuesday, April 28, you received from me another announcement inviting you to consider submitting presentations for the SPSCVA sessions at the Central (New Orleans) and Pacific (Portland) Division APA Meetings, submitting as usual to me (nunanr@cofc.edu) for the Central (Sept. 5 deadline) and John McAteer (filmphilosopher@gmail.com), for the Pacific (Sept. 15 deadline). But there will also be a special session on Noir at the Central, and those submissions should be sent to Sander Lee (slee@keene.edu ) rather than to me. I also reminded you then that Chris Grau was still receiving submissions for the SPSCVA colloquia at next January’s Eastern Division APA meeting, through May 15. In light of the COVID-19 chaos we’ve all had to deal with, Chris has now extended that submission deadline until June 7. Submission for Eastern SPSCVA colloquia should be sent, as usual, to: grau@Clemson.edu Here’s a CFP link for Chris’s CFP for the Eastern APA: https://philevents.org/event/show/82742?

Related to the APA meeting submissions, I want to note that the APA announced yesterday (Monday, May 4), that the APA does currently plan to proceed with all three APA Division meetings in their designated physical locations, circumstances permitting. Submissions for the main program for the Central opened May 1, and will do so for the Pacific on August 1. So that’s something to keep in mind, too.

Best wishes,

Richard

Richard Nunan

Secretary, SPSCVA

Professor of Philosophy & Affiliate Professor of Film Studies

Department of Philosophy

College of Charleston

Charleston, SC 29424

APRIL 18, 2020

Dear SPSCVA members,

I’m writing to update all of you concerning the status of the SPSCVA’s journal, Film and Philosophy, and future developments. A small group of existing and past officers, and editorial board members, have been working together to insure the continuity of the journal and the SPSCVA itself, in the wake of Dan Shaw’s sudden death on March 3rd, less than two months after he had gotten volume 24 into circulation.

I’m happy to report that Dan Flory of Montana State has kindly volunteered, and been accepted to serve, as the journal’s interim editor for volume 25, which will be due out early in 2021. Some of you old-timers may remember that Dan Flory, along with Dan Shaw and Sander Lee, teamed up to revive the journal in 2000-2002, after a three-year hiatus, with a pair of double issue years (Dan Shaw and Sander Lee in 2000, and Dan Flory in 2002). Dan guest-edited another volume in 2006, and was, I believe, the last to do so during Dan Shaw’s two-decade editorship. So he is well equipped to fill in the breach for us once again. Those of us on the ad hoc transitional committee are very appreciative of Dan’s offer. Dan is only committing for this one year, though, and we will be coming back to you within a few weeks with an announcement of a search for a new permanent editor.

In the meantime, we want to welcome submissions for 2021’s General Interest edition of Film and Philosophy. Submissions should be 2500-7500 (apart from endnotes), in MS-WORD. If you have a submission to offer, please send your file to Dan Flory at by June 30th, 2020 at FilmPhilJournal@gmail.com

As the date implies, our goal is to try to stick to the same schedule that Dan Shaw set many years ago.

If any of you submitted a paper to Dan Shaw for the next issue before he passed away, please resubmit it to Dan Flory at the email listed here. (We have no way of knowing about prior submissions for volume 25.) If any of you are in possession of an invitation from Dan Shaw to revise and resubmit a volume 24 submission which was not accepted for inclusion in that volume, and you intended to do so, please send your revised submission and whatever exchange you may have had with Dan Shaw in the past to Dan Flory now. (Again here, we would have no way of knowing about your past editorial interaction with Dan Shaw.)

Finally, as many of us last heard from Dan Shaw before he died, shifting the journal to an online presence as well as the traditional print edition has been a great success with the latest volume. We certainly intend to continue that arrangement with the Philosophy Documentation Center. One important change in that connection is that PDC now handles all membership renewals at this website:https://www.pdcnet.org/spscva

Those of us who are serving on the ad-hoc SPSCVA transition committee hope you are all faring as well as we might hope for ourselves and our families and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic.