by DSNA Office Comment Closed

Newsletter Spring 2025

Table of Contents

Member & Dictionary News

What have you been up to? The DSNA loves to share news of member projects, publications, programs, and more! Please send your news to dsnaadmin@gmail.com for inclusion; deadline for submissions for the Fall 2025 issue is Monday 25 August. You can also see and share what’s happening on DSNA’s Member Forum, Facebook, and X/Twitter.

Steven van Leeuwen announces that half (1.2 of 2.3 million text-blocks) of the full-text of the New English Dictionary (Murray et al. 1893) is available at his website, WEHD.com.

Cristiano Furiassi reports on the tenth Richard Allsopp Memorial Lecture:

Date: March 14th, 2025
Place: University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados
Organizer: Jason F. Siegel (Richard and Jeannette Allsopp Centre for Caribbean Lexicography)
Guest lecturer: Cristiano Furiassi

The Richard and Jeannette Allsopp Centre for Caribbean Lexicography in conjunction with the Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature held the 10th Richard Allsopp Memorial Lecture on March 14th, 2025, in the Cynthia Wilson Arts Lecture Theatre at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.

Celebrated as a significant milestone honoring the legacy and contributions of Professor Richard Allsopp, this year’s guest lecture was delivered by Cristiano Furiassi, Associate Professor in English Linguistics at the University of Turin, Italy.

Under the topic Richard Allsopp’s ‘Amateur’ Sources: Reviving Barbadian Folklore, Professor Furiassi presented on the contribution of information from non-professional or ‘amateur’ lexicographers contained within Richard Allsopp’s publications – the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (DCEU), the New Register of Caribbean English Usage (NRCEU) and A Book of Afric Caribbean Proverbs (BACP) – while focusing mainly on Barbadian English and Bajan.

Professor Furiassi further highlighted examples of Barbadian toponymic, i.e., placename-based, idioms extracted from the above-mentioned sources. He also expanded on how ‘amateur’ endeavors may continue to shed new light on territorial lexis and phraseology, thus attesting to their role in reviving local folklore by ensuring that Barbadian lore remains available to future generations.

The lecture was held as a hybrid event, bringing together members of the university community, Jeannette Allsopp, other members of the Allsopp family and specially invited guests, including the Acting President of Barbados, His Excellency the Very Reverend Dr Jeffrey Gibson, and his wife, who graced the occasion with their presence. An article by John Sealy, published in the national newspaper Weekend Nation on Friday, March 21st, 2025, testified to this by also including a picture by Lennox Devonish portraying Prof. Furiassi and the Very Reverend Dr Gibson in conversation.

Message from the President

It is finally (ostensibly) proper spring here in the mid-Atlantic, which can mean only one thing: the next biennial conference of the DSNA is just around the corner. We will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the DSNA at DSNA25 in Buffalo NY, from May 28–31. The Conference and Program Committees have planned an excellent conference for us, and I do hope you’ll join us.

Astute members of the DSNA—that is to say, all of you—likely took note of an email from the DSNA Offices noting that we were, at a rather late stage of the proverbial game, planning on offering virtual attendance for the conference. As the spring progressed, it became clear to the Board and to the Conference Committee that the advisories warning against travel to or within the U.S. meant that many of our members and presenters may need to withdraw from participating in the conference. (Fun fact: the DSNA’s membership now comprises more people outside the U.S. than people inside the U.S.)

The DSNA is a society that was founded on the ideals of cross-border fellowship and scholarship. As a society, we have been deeply enriched by the many contributions of our members from all parts of the world, and we have always welcomed anyone interested in lexicography or dictionaries regardless of their background, industry, field of study, or nation. In these uneven times—coming when the DSNA is celebrating 50 full years of that friendship—the Board and the Conference Committee felt that, in the interest of our mission, we needed to do what we could to include all the members and presenters who wanted to join us but couldn’t safely travel to Buffalo to do so.

So: we are, I am very pleased to say, able to offer synchronous virtual attendance to the two parallel sessions held on each day of the conference, and we are planning on recording both the plenary presentation and the presidential address and posting them for asynchronous viewing after the conference. You can register to attend the conference (virtually or in-person) on the DSNA25 website. I am also pleased to report that we are working with any presenters who are not able to travel to the U.S. so their scholarship can be shared with us via a prerecorded presentation and virtual Q&A in their current program slots. I am deeply, deeply indebted to the hard work of Lisa Berglund, Walt Hakala, and Lindsay Rose Russell, who scrambled and called in favors and changed plans so that we are able to make DSNA25 accessible to as many as possible.

This is certainly not the way I pictured DSNA25 going—but, at the same time, this commitment to supporting each other is exactly the thing I have come to expect from the DSNA. I hope you’ll celebrate the 50th anniversary of this great little society with us however you can.

– Kory Stamper

DSNA25 Update

Preparations for the DSNA 2025 meeting in Buffalo are shifting into high gear! We are excited to host you in the “Queen City”! We are also very pleased that we have been able to arrange for virtual conference attendance and participation, and welcome those who will be meeting with us online.

We are delighted to partner with the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library on an exhibit called “What does it all mean? Exploring the Dictionary.” This show features rare and unusual dictionaries from the BECPL’s astonishing rare books collection, as well as informational panels aimed at a general audience, explaining how a dictionary entry is constructed and how words “get in the dictionary”; reviewing the history of English language lexicography; and highlighting dictionaries of indigenous languages, queer and feminist lexicography, African American lexicons, satirical dictionaries, and dictionaries of slang. The exhibit was co-curated by Lisa Berglund, Walter Hakala, and Heather Gring, the rare book archivist at the BECPL, with assistance from Hannah Stocklosa, intern and student at the University of Buffalo.  It will be on display for about six months, and both Lisa and Walt are likely to give public lectures at the library later in the year, in conjunction with the exhibit.

The exhibit “What does it all mean? Exploring the Dictionary” has opened at the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library

The BECPL is the site of our final plenary session of the meeting, so you will have a chance to check out the exhibit. As this is the 50th anniversary of the society, we plan to conclude the meeting with  “Will Dictionaries Exist in 2075? A roundtable on the past and future of lexicography.” Following the plenary we will head over to Big Ditch Brewery for lunch and beer.

The exhibit showcases a wide range of rare, famous, and unique lexicons, including these that have been annotated by former owners.

In the upcoming days we will post on the conference website the preliminary program and information on restaurants and activities in Buffalo. Those staying in the dorms at Buffalo State will be sent instructions for getting your keys a week or two before the meeting. In the meantime, if you have questions don’t hesitate to contact Lisa (berglul@bufffalostate.edu) or Walt (walterha@buffalo.edu).

– Lisa Berglund

Journal Update

It’s an exciting time for the DSNA’s journal, Dictionaries. Our next two issues (at least) will be published with Diamond Open Access thanks to our participation in Project Muse’s Subscribe To Open (S2O) pilot program.

Open access means that anyone will be able to read those issues of the journal without paying for them. This is very good news for authors publishing with Dictionaries. Their articles will be more likely to be read and cited because they will be easier to access by readers all over the world. Open-access publishing is now a requirement for many scholars, especially those working in public institutions or accepting grant funding. Publication in Dictionaries this year will meet that requirement.

While some publishers achieve open access by charging authors a “processing fee,” the Subscribe to Open model allows us to “open” whole issues of the journal without such fees.

This is how it works: Project Muse, our online publishing partner, sells its collections of journal subscriptions to university libraries. They set a target for library subscriptions that will allow them to be financially sustained for the year.  If they meet that target (the “sustainability threshold”), then the whole collection becomes open-access for that year. Project Muse surpassed its sustainability threshold for 2025, so the two issues of Dictionaries volume 46 will be open-access.

The S2O program does come with uncertainty. We cannot know until the end of January 2026 whether the next volume will meet the sustainability threshold. And we do not know if the S2O program will be renewed after its pilot years. Nevertheless, this pilot is allowing us to offer open-access at the moment and to explore the sustainability of the S2O model for the DSNA.

As this newsletter goes to press, we are still able to receive submissions for the late 2025 issue. If you’re thinking about submitting a manuscript—or have any questions about open-access or submission processes, please contact Lynne Murphy as soon as possible.

– M. Lynne Murphy

2025 American Council of Learned Societies Report

Since 1994, DSNA has been a member of the American Council of Learned Societies, an umbrella organization of 81 groups committed to the study and support of the humanities and social sciences. The ACLS held its annual meeting on April 24 & 25, 2025, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the atmosphere was tense but optimistic. It was very encouraging to hear about ways that societies large and small are defending scholars, higher education, and intellectual labor, and to glean ideas as to what we in the DSNA might do to support our members and their important work, as well as the humanities and social sciences in general.

The forum “Academic Freedom: PEN America and Societies” was for me the most stimulating portion of the meeting. In a presentation that might have been designed to catch the attention of DSNA members, Jonathan Friedman, U.S. Free Expression Programs for PEN America spoke about the hostile “ongoing revision of terminology” (for example, the way the White House has appropriated the acronym DEI, originally representing “diversity, equity, inclusion,” to stand for “division, extremism, ideology.” He emphasized the way in which language is being “weaponized.” National Council of Teachers of English Executive Director Emily Kirkpatrick described current attacks on K-12 teachers, leveled by parents, school boards, and other entities, over their choices of reading material. She emphasized that these threats are local phenomena and that attempts to sequester or push out teacher- or librarian-selected reading material need to be met and challenged locally as well.

The executive director of the American Historical Association, Jim Grossman, followed up by asking, of the challenges faced in the classroom, museums, historical sites, and other bastions of humanistic study, “What can we actually do?” Like Kirkpatrick, Grossman stressed the importance of local action. Write an op-ed for your local paper, get on a local radio show, run for the school board or show up at board meetings. Read the legislation restricting humanities study being introduced into state houses and write to your state senators and representatives. Grossman noted that while members of Congress are flooded with letters and calls, legislators at the state level often are not, and therefore are more likely to respond to constituents.

Also on the program was a conversation between ACLS President Joy Connolly and Laurie Patton, president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences that described initiatives for rallying societies and universities to protest the gutting of the National Endowment for the Humanities, including this week’s statement from the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Delivering the Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture was philosopher Judith Butler of the University of California, Berkeley, whose absorbing talk explored the literal and metaphorical idea of the “extra-mural.” Professor Butler’s lecture and President Connelly’s report to the Council are available for streaming on the ACLS website.

At the official meeting of the Council the delegates approved a new set of Bylaws for the organization and admitted the Association for Asian American Studies into the ACLS.

– Lisa Berglund, DSNA Delegate to the ACLS

Upcoming Conferences

Publication Information

The DSNA Newsletter is usually published twice a year, in the spring and fall. It is currently edited by Rachel Fletcher and Lindsay Rose Russell. Associate Editor is Peter Chipman. Member news items can be sent to dsnaadmin@gmail.com; please include Member News in the subject line.

Our Executive Director is Lindsay Rose Russell.

Send correspondence re membership, etc. to
dsnaadmin@gmail.com

Dictionary Society of North America
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USAThis issue: Vol. 49 No. 1 (2025)
Cumulative issue #99