2016 Slate of Nominees for American Name Society Officers

http://www.americannamesociety.org/2016-slate-of-nominees-for-ans-officers/

http://www.americannamesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Nominating-Committee-Slate-2016FINALEDITED.pdf

The American Name Society is pleased to announce the 2016 Slate of Nominees for ANS Officer positions:

• Vice President: Dr. Dorothy Dodge Robbins, Louisiana Tech University, USA

Background 

Dorothy Dodge Robbins is the Charlotte Lewis Endowed Professor of English and the Graduate Coordinator of English at Louisiana Tech University. She is a member of the honors faculty and a professor in the Tech-London study abroad program. Dorothy earned her PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. At Tech, she teaches courses in 20th and 21st century British Literature and Technical Communication. A member of the ANS since 2001, her specialty is literary onomastics. Articles on Virginia Woolf, A. S. Byatt, and T. S. Eliot, along with book reviews, have appeared in Names. She is completing her 2014-2015 term as the Executive Secretary for the ANS. Dorothy is an awardwinning professor and book editor. She served as volume editor for Critical Insights: Mrs. Dalloway (Salem Press 2012). Together with her husband, playwright Kenneth Robbins, she has edited four literary anthologies, including the award-winning Christmas Stories from Ohio (Kent State UP 2010). 

Duties 

The person elected to this position is primarily responsible for co-organizing the ANS annual conference in close cooperation with the ANS President, the ANS Executive Council (EC), the LSA conference organizers, and the LSA Sister Societies. 

• Allied Conference Coordinator*: Dr. Andreas Gavrielatos, University of Edinburgh, SCOTLAND

Background 

In 2012, Andreas was awarded a PhD in Classics from the University of Leeds. His dissertation examined personal naming in Roman Gaul and demonstrated the effects of bilingualism on the morphology of names. Presently, Andreas is a teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Andreas is a specialist in anthroponymy and classical philology. He is currently developing a major project focused on the development of theoretical framework for the analysis of personal names in ancient multilingual communities of the Roman Empire. Andreas recently completed an edited volume entitled “Self Presentation and Identity in the Roman World”. Although his research is based in Ancient Onomastics, Andreas’s ultimate aim is to identify connections to modern attitudes towards personal names and their function in shaping individual identities in a radically changing world. 

Duties 

The person elected to this position is principally responsible for organizing the ANS session at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association. This activity involves issuing a call for papers, assembling a team of abstract reviewers, and coordinating the selected presentations with the MLA organizers and ANS.

• Member-at-large: Dr. Jan Tent, University of Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Background 

A long-time member of the ANS Journal Editorial Board, Jan is an internationally recognized expert in toponymy. The author of nearly 100 academic publications and a regular media consultant on place naming in Australia and New Zealand, Jan is also a reviewer for World Englishes, the Australian Journal of Linguistics; and is the Director of the Australian National Placenames Survey. In addition to these duties outside of the ANS, Jan also has an excellent record of service within the ANS. Aside from his editorial duties for NAMES, this year alone he has performed the following services for the Society: a member of the Emerging Scholar Award Committee; a regular contributor to the news items segment of the new ANS website; and an abstract reviewer for the 2016 ANS conference. Moreover, he is presently working with the current ANS President to develop a special issue of NAMES on onomastics and lexicography. 

Duties 

The person elected to this position serves as voting member of the Executive Council and is expected to participate actively in the legislative decision-making. This officer also serves on various auxiliary committees of the ANS (e.g., the Emerging Scholar Awards committee).

• Membership Officer*: Ms. Jennifer Moss, babynames.com, USA

Background 

Jennifer Moss is a graduate of Northwestern University and the founder/developer of BabyNames.com. She has had over 25 years' experience in database architecture and software development and began her internet career in 1996 with the launch of her website. Since then, she's worked with many small and large consumer-oriented websites, including eToys, Korn/Ferry Futurestep, and IMDB. A long-time name enthusiast, her website is now visited by millions every month. Jennifer has been interviewed by several top national and international media corporations, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune. She has appeared onscreen for CNN, ESPN, Good Morning America, MSNBC, Huffington Post Live and many local news programs. In addition, she is a published author. Aside from "The One-in-a-Million Baby Name Book", a companion to the BabyNames.com website, she has also written a series of mysteries published by Black Opal Books. 

Duties 

This is a newly created ANS office. In addition to being a voting member of the ANS Executive Council (EC), the person in this office is responsible for managing the ANS membership database, both institutional and individual. To accomplish this task, this officer must liaison with ANS members, the ANS Executive Council, and Taylor and Francis, the current publisher of the ANS Journal, NAMES. 

• Secretary: Dr. Luisa Caiazzo (University of Naples, ITALY)

Background 

A graduate of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Naples “Federico II”, Luisa is a research grant holder and adjunct professor at the University of Naples “L’Orientale’”. Within this capacity, her research is centered on the investigation of naming practices in Anglophone postcolonial settings. In addition to her teaching and researching duties, she regularly serves as an invited reviewer for such publications as the Journal of Applied Linguistics. From 2005 to 2008, she served as the Vice President and then President of “Giscel Campania”, a branch of the Società di Linguistica Italiana (Italian Society of Linguistics). Her presentations and publications include corpus linguistics, translation studies, academic discourse, discourse analysis, language teaching, and of course onomastics. A highly respected onomastic scholar in Europe, Luisa recently co-organized the international onomastics conference “(Re)naming places, (re)shaping identities” in Naples, Italy, which was attended by many current members of the ANS. 

Duties 

The person in this position serves as a voting member of the ANS Executive Council and its various committees (e.g. the Nominating Committee). Aside from these duties, the Secretary is responsible for taking and disseminating the official minutes from the ANS Business Meetings, creating the ANS newsletters, and sending our ANS members announcements regarding important events (e.g., the Nominating Committee’s Slate).

The Nominating Committee Slate 2016 document includes background on the nominees and additional information about the open positions.

Positions marked with an asterisk have been pre-approved by the ANS Executive Council, but are still pending general approval during the 2016 ANS Business Meeting in Washington, D.C.