On October 15, 2015, the Society posted this notice:
Dr. Barry H. Leeds, Emeritus Professor of English at Connecticut State University, died on April 15,2015. Barry was one of the co-founders of the Norman Mailer Society, and served as its Vice President since the Society’s founding in 2003.
He wrote extensively on the life and works of his good friend, Norman Mailer, including his pioneering study, The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer (1969), and The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer (2002), and countless essays and reviews. In 2014, he published a candid and moving memoir, A Moveable Beast: Scenes from My Life. He also served on the editorial board of the Mailer Review. His many contributions to understanding Mailer the man and Mailer the artist are one of the pillars of Mailer scholarship.
Barry was a genial, interested and supportive colleague and friend to many, and to honor his critical work and generous friendship the Society is establishing The Barry Leeds Travel Fund, to be used in helping students attend the Society’s annual conferences and, if sufficient donations are obtained, to defray travel expenses for visits to the Harry Ransom Humanities Center at the University of Texas-Austin, where Mailer’s archive is located. A foundational gift from Dr. Ashley Leeds, Barry’s daughter, who has enthusiastically supported the idea of this fund, has been received with gratitude.
If you wish to make a tax-deductible gift in support of the Leeds Travel Fund, please visit the Join page for ways to give. David will also accept contributions at this year’s conference.
It was posted two weeks after the 2015 conference in Provincetown, September 30 to October 3, which it calls “this year’s conference”; “David” is the Society’s treasurer, David Light. The Fund is described today on its own page, Barry Leeds Travel Fund, and its namesake in Remembering Barry H. Leeds.
Founded in Provincetown
Barry Leeds died on April 15, 2015. At the 2015 conference that fall, the Society’s first since his death, the program cover carried a photograph of Norman Mailer with him, and on Saturday, October 3, Marc Triplett led a session remembering him. His sister, Linda Field, and his daughter, Ashley Leeds, came to the conference (Business Meeting minutes, 2015). At a memorial for him during the conference both of them spoke, as did several members of the Board, and Ashley Leeds presented the Society with a check for $5,000 to launch the Fund (Society update to members, October 2015).
The Fund was announced at the business meeting on October 1: a travel fund in Barry Leeds’s name for attendance at future conferences, begun with $5,000 from Ashley Leeds, with about $1,200 in further contributions already made. The treasurer’s report noted that the year’s receipts did not include money received, or still to come, for the Fund (minutes, 2015).
How it was to work
The Executive Board took up “the Barry Leeds proposal” at its meeting the morning after the conference, October 4 (program; Executive Board minutes, 2015). There would be an application process for grants to attend the annual conference, and it was expected that there would be one grant a year for research at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, home of the Mailer papers. Bonnie Culver and Bob Begiebing volunteered to set up the selection of recipients.
That month the Society told its members that gifts had brought the Fund to about $7,000, and asked for help in reaching $10,000. The money would go to $100 grants for students attending future conferences—“an excellent way to bring in new members”—and, as the Board had decided, to one grant each year to a scholar traveling to work in the Mailer papers (Society update to members, October 2015).
The grants for students were not new. Since at least 2008 the Society’s calls for papers had offered $100 travel grants to student presenters (2008 conference). The idea had been raised as early as the 2005 business meeting, when Ashton Howley asked whether graduate students presenting on Mailer might get travel grants, and Mike Lennon agreed that the Society should do what it could.
The grants
The Society’s membership drives set out the terms. In 2016 the Fund would give $100 travel grants to students attending the conference at Monmouth University, and the Society would accept applications for a $500 award to a scholar traveling to Austin to study the Mailer papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. Robert Begiebing and Bonnie Culver would choose the winner. Only one $500 award would be given that year; more would follow in future years if the Fund grew. The 2017 drive repeated the offer for the Sarasota conference: applicants were to send Begiebing a brief letter explaining their research project by March 15. In 2019, President Maggie McKinley reminded members of the Fund again, with the same $100 student grants and $500 research award, and letters due to Begiebing and Culver by May 1.
The sources differ on the size of the research award. The Society’s October 2015 update to members put the annual grant to a scholar at $250; the membership drives of 2016, 2017, and 2019 offered $500.
The calls for papers for the 2017 and 2018 conferences offered $100 travel grants to students whose proposals were approved, and the 2019 call for the Graduate Writing Award promised a $100 travel grant to every student who presented at that year’s conference at Wilkes. The Society’s minutes from 2016 through 2019 do not record the grants awarded. For its 2022 conference in Long Branch, co-sponsored by Monmouth University, the Society waived registration fees for students and offered grants toward their travel and lodging (2022 conference).
In Works and Days
- Barry H. Leeds — Literary scholar; author of the first book-length study of Mailer’s work, The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer (1969), and a recurring Mailer interviewer and critic.
- Harry Ransom Center, the home of the Mailer papers