Professional Development Session: Publishing a Monograph (Panel)

Type of Abstract (select): Panel Discussion

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This Professional Development Panel Discussion on Publishing a Monograph is proposed as part of AHEA’s new Early Career Scholars Network programming. In this panel discussion, scholars will share their experiences in book publishing. After a brief introduction by the moderator, each panelist will speak for 10-15 minutes. A Question and Answer session will follow, and during this time all panelists will have the opportunity to answer audience questions based on their relevant experiences. Topics of discussion will include: advice on selecting and approaching an editor or scholarly press, how to choose a topic of interest to publishers, the steps of the book publication process (initial conversations with editors, proposal development and submission, acceptance, revision, marketing, etc.), as well as other related topics, such as working with a translator, obtaining and documenting permissions to publish documents from archives, applying for subventions, etc. As a supplement to the discussion, a book publishing resource guide will be distributed to the session participants. The session is intended to benefit scholars in graduate school or less than ten years out of their doctoral programs who have questions about writing a first book, however, middle- and later-career scholars might also benefit from the discussion and contribute to it by sharing their own experiences in the Q&A session.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Sarah Lucas is Assistant Professor at Texas A&M

Reiner, Brahms, and the American Hungarian Studies Foundation’s “Night at the Symphony”

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In April 1956, August J. Molnar and the Board of Directors of the American Hungarian Studies Foundation approached the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director Fritz Reiner with a request. The Foundation, in its second year of activity, intended to purchase a significant number of seats for a “Night at the Symphony,” for which they hoped Reiner would program a “concert of music by Hungarian composers” during the orchestra’s 1956-1957 season. Hungarian-American conductor Fritz Reiner had been a student of Béla Bartók’s and was known for his promotion of his former teacher’s works, but his reputation was not built on a particular specialization in conducting all-Hungarian concerts. Regardless, when the request from the Foundation crossed his desk, he agreed. As the concert date in March 1957 approached, however, Reiner seemed to have forgotten this commitment—instead of a program featuring music by multiple Hungarians, not a single Hungarian composer’s work was represented in the repertoire list. When alerted to this error by orchestra manager George Kuyper, Reiner responded immediately with a compromise—he added a few of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, originally planned for another concert that month, to the program. Based, in part, on examination of Reiner’s correspondence with his orchestra manager, this paper seeks to illuminate one of the early cultural activities of the American Hungarian Studies Foundation before its move from the Chicago suburbs to New Brunswick, New Jersey, while also considering the significance of Reiner’s programming change to satisfy his commitment to the Foundation’s request.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Sarah M. Lucas is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. She completed her PhD in musicology at the University of Iowa in 2018. Her dissertation, “Fritz Reiner and the Legacy of Béla Bartók’s Orchestral Music in the United States,” is based on archival research carried out in the U.S. and Hungary, where she conducted research with the support of a Fulbright Award. She serves as an AHEA Board Member-At-Large and co-chair of the AHEA conference program committee’s Music and Folklore area. Since Fall 2022 she has served as an Associate Editor for Hungarian Cultural Studies.