Membership
As a working group dedicated to the contemporary arts, CAAS is comprised of two kinds of members. With a small, self-selecting core of Participants, CAAS can function as a working group with a reliable constituency. Participants can propose names of other faculty who can be formally invited to join the group. Second, faculty not in this core group of Participants can ask to join CAAS and are welcomed as "Guests" to the organization.
- "Participants" are members who publish, teach, work, create, and/or perform regularly in the area of contemporary arts studies and who have made a long-term commitment to CAAS. Participants come regularly to CAAS meetings, take on organizational tasks, and are instrumental to long-range planning for the organization. Participants have access to all functions of the CAAS Blackboard site.
- "Guests" are members who join for short-term projects or who come to CAAS meetings to learn about the organization before committing to it long term. Guests have access to all parts of the CAAS Blackboard site except "Discussion Boards" and "Meeting Follow-up." If after attending a number of meetings, a Guest decides that his/her work does in fact fit with the mission of CAAS, then that person can ask to be included as a "Participant" in the group and may be responsible for long-term tasks within the organization.
Anyone can be a Guest of CAAS, and anyone can ask to become a Participant after attending a number of CAAS meetings and/or being part of a CAAS activity, such as a symposium or conference. Because CAAS is a working group with the aim of creating published and/or publically disseminated work by participants, participants generally are consulted by others in the group before new guests are invited to join. CAAS Participants will determine final status of membership, but we've found that participation tends to be a self-selecting process and don't support strong, top-down oversight of membership.