E. At-Large Seat #2

Downing A. Thomas is Professor of French at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime: 1647-1785 (CambridgeUP, 2002) and Music and the Origins of Language: Theories from the French Enlightenment (CambridgeUP, 1995). He is also co-editor (with Roberta Montemorra Marvin) of Operatic Migrations: Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries in Musical Drama (Ashgate, 2006) and has published in ECS, SECC, SVEC, Representations, L’Esprit Créateur, and Common Knowledge, among others. He has received grants and fellowships from NEH (Summer Stipend), ACLS (travel grant), McMaster University/ASECS, the Department of State, and the FACE Foundation. He has also been elected President of ADFL (2007) and named Chevalier (Knight) in the Order of Academic Palms by the French Government and Honorary Professor (Hebei Normal Univ., China). Previous service to ASECS include President, MWSECS (2001), Editor and Assoc. Editor, SECC (2006-09), and Nominating Committee, ASECS (2002-03). Other board and administrative experience include serving as associate provost and dean of International Programs (Iowa, 2008-19); chair of the Department of French & Italian (1999-2002; 2003-07); member, Board of Directors, Pyxera Global (2012-2019); and US Advisory Board member, UniQuest (2021-). He is a lifetime member of ASECS, committed to supporting its role as an inspiring home for a diverse community of scholars and teachers.

Karen Stolley is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University (Atlanta, GA). Publications include DOMESTICATING EMPIRE: Enlightenment in Spanish America (2013) and essays on eighteenth-century studies in The Routledge Companion to the Hispanic Enlightenment (2020), Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World: A Gendered Perspective (2021), and Mexican Literature as World Literature (2022). She co-edited with Mariselle Mélendez a 2015 issue of Colonial Latin America Review devoted to “Enlightenments in Ibero-America.” She serves on the editorial boards of Dieciocho and Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment. She is currently co-editing with Catherine M. Jaffe a collection of essays on “The Black Legend in the Eighteenth Century: National Identities under Construction” (forthcoming in 2024 with Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment). She has been a member of ASECS and the Ibero-American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies for over three decades and has previously served on the Executive Committee (2009-2012) and the Gottshalk Prize Committee (2013, 2022). She is committed to the full participation in our organization of all scholars and teachers working on the global eighteenth century.