Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies

Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies will feature people, mostly from colleges and universities in the region, and featured three panels, on Asian Literature, Asian Communism and South Asian Politics. Robert Crane, then a faculty member at Duke University, and formerly Secretary-Treasurer of the Association for Asian Studies, led the founding effort supported by a number of other scholars from Florida, the Carolinas, and Virginia. This group acted as godparents during the first decade, providing formal leadership from its members and locating places for the annual session to meet. In that initial period, much of the financial support came from the colleges and universities that acted as host; that still remains the case to some degree. A subvention from the national organization was instrumental in keeping membership fees nominal, thereby aiding the recruitment of members.