Minutes of CACLALS AGM June 3, 2013
Respectfully submitted by Anna Guttman
In attendance Jennifer Adese, Jesse Arsenault, Veronica Austen, John Ball, Guy Beauregard, Jill Didur, Renate Eigenbrod, Margery Fee, Susan Gingell, Anna Guttman, Philip Holden, David Leahy, Judith Leggatt, Camille van der Marel, Pam McCallum, Philip Mingay, Janet Neigh, Susie O’Brien, Malissa Phung, Mariam Pirbhai, Sue Spearey,
1. Agenda Passed unanimously
2. Minutes of 2012 AGM A. Guttman did not bring copies of the minutes and apologized to the members. An oral summary of the minutes was given. A written version of the 2012 AGM Minutes has been posted to the CACLALS website.
3. Business arising a. Insurance. In the past, insurance was deemed too expensive and unnecessary. However, the next executive may choose to revisit this issue. b. Voluntary Donation for Indigenous Language revitalization. 50% of members who registered online made a voluntary donation and other members have made donation by cheque. Only about $200 has been raised, which is not a huge amount of money, but demonstrates the value of the principle. Congress will report on our initiative to other associations. CALA also supports the initiative. 11 of 17 of their members who registered online also contributed (63%). ACQL did not support the institution of this fee as they already ask members to donate to support the Gabrielle Roy Prize. ACCUTE has not definitively decided one way or the other. S. Gingell will follow up with ACCUTE after Congress.
4. President’s Report Most news can be found in the Spring 2013 edition of CHIMO. Thanks to the outgoing executive. The end of Commonwealth Foundation support is a challenge for the organization. The executive discussed doing more co-sponsoring of speakers with other associations at future conferences. J. Didur suggested organizing a meeting of the presidents of the cognate associations at the end of Congress every year. The executive discussed meeting less frequently and but rejected this possibility. There is also the possibility of getting support from the private sector, though this may raise ethical concerns. A member of the executive may be needed to apply for / seek out funding as part of their mandate. The SSHRC Connections Grant requires considerable work for an application and also requires a tangible output. The idea of a program chair was also discussed, but ultimately rejected. It was recommended that the local arrangements coordinator be involved at an earlier stage, to more effectively draw on his / her expertise. S. Spearey has agreed to be the local arrangements coordinator for the Brock Congress in 2014. Thanks to Sue Spearey.
Discussion: S. O’Brien raised the possibility of leaving Congress. G. Beauregard asked about rising Congress costs. S. Gingell pointed out that A/V and catering costs are high. S. Spearey had suggestions for keeping costs down at Brock next year. D. Leahy suggested having a very public, ticketed event, to raise funds. What does Congress have to say about ticketed events? R. Eigenbrod suggested that faculty members donate parts of their grants. L.C. Van der Marel also pointed out that grad students with major awards also have access to funding for speakers. G. Beauregard raised the prospect of renaming the association in light of the loss of Commonwealth Foundation funding. S. Gingell will raise this in St. Lucia. Can we still belong to ACLALS if we change our name? What might we change our name to? S. Gingell pointed out that other member regions may still be accessing funding and we don’t want to compromise this. S. Gingell encouraged members to share their funding ideas with president-elect Dorothy Lane.
5. Report from the Secretary-Treasurer As demonstrated from the latest financial report in the spring edition of CHIMO, CACLALS remains financially healthy. CACLALS has been promised $1000 from the CFHSS speakers’ fund towards Jenny Sharpe’s expenses. $1950 in honorariums has been committed to speakers at our conference. Another $161.31 was also spent to screen firebear. A copy of the DVD will be donated to First Peoples House at the University of Victoria. A full accounting of Congress 2013 finances will be provided in the fall edition of CHIMO. This is the last year for which travel grants will officially be available. This is a problem that the next executive will need to address. Despite losing access to some sources of funding (from SSHRC, from the Commonwealth Foundation), at least $15 000 will be passed to the next executive.
6. Election of officers Proposed slate: Secretary-Treasurer: Pamela McCallum Pamela is professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. Her areas of research are literary theory, British literature 1900 to the present, and literatures of globalization. She has recently published articles on Zadie Smith, Jacques Derrida and Raymond Williams, and Nancy Huston. Her 2011 book on Jane Ash Poitras is Cultural Memories and Imagined Futures. From 2001-2011 she was editor of the journal, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature.
BC and Territories Rep, Shalini Khan Shalini is a Caribbeanist and World Literatures specialist. Her research and teaching interests include representations of disease, illness and disability in literary and medical texts, post/colonial science fictions and transdisciplinary pedagogies. She is a member of Capilano University’s (North Vancouver) Department of English.
Ontario Rep, Susie O’Brien Susie is an Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies, and Director of the Cultural Studies and Critical Theory MA Program at McMaster University. She’s been a member of CACLALS since 1991. Her teaching and research over the last fifteen years have focussed on the intersections of postcolonial and environmental literary and cultural studies in the context of globalization. Her published work includes essays in Cultural Critique, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Postcolonial Text, Modern Fiction Studies, Mosaic, Canadian Literature, Canadian Poetry and South Atlantic Quarterly, and a textbook, Popular Culture: A User’s Guide (3rd ed. 2013), co-authored with Imre Szeman. She also has a chapter co-authored with Dana Mount, “Postcolonialism and the Environment”, forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies.Her recent and ongoing current projects focus on the postcolonial politics of local food, and the concept of resilience in ecology and culture.
Quebec Rep, David Leahy David is about to step down as the head of Études anglaises et interculturelles at the Université de Sherbrooke and he also teaches in its Littérature canadienne comparée graduate program. He has an MA in Area Studies: the Commonwealth, from the University of London (UK); a PhD in Humanities from Concordia University, and he held a post-doctoral research fellowship on “Homosexual Panic in Postcolonial Literatures” at York University. His areas of specialization are Comparative Canadian & Quebecois literatures, and Post-colonial, Gender and Cultural Studies. He is a member of VersUS, the Groupe de recherche en études littéraires et culturelles comparées au Canada et au Québec at the Université de Sherbrooke, and has recently been contracted to contribute a chapter on Québécois literature during the Quiet Revolution to the Oxford Handbook to Canadian Literature (Cynthia Sugars, editor). He is currently researching and writing primarily about the Neoliberal variant of bourgeois hegemony in Canada and Quebec from a cultural studies perspective, and just received a research grant from FQRSC (Québec) for the project: “La contre-révolution culturelle néolibérale : réarticulation de l’hégémonie bourgeoise dans les littératures du Canada et du Québec (1980-2000).”
Atlantic Rep, John C. Ball John C. Ball is a Professor of English and Associate Dean of Arts at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. A CACLALS member since 1991 and a past executive member, he is the author of two books, including Imagining London: Postcolonial Literature and the Transnational Metropolis (UTP 2004). He is a co-editor of Studies in Canadian Literature and editor of the World Fiction volume of the Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction (Wiley-Blackwell 2011).
Colleges Rep, Brenna Clarke Gray Brenna holds a PhD from the University of New Brunswick and has been a member of the English Department at Douglas College since 2010. She specializes in contemporary Canadian literature, comics, and 9/11 and pop culture studies. Brenna is currently at work on her first book, a comprehensive study of the work of Douglas Coupland.
Graduate Rep 2013-15, Kasim Hussain Kasim Husain is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. His research concerns contemporary British cultural production from the 1980s through to the present, examining the representation of identity political struggles as they coincide with resistance to neoliberalization. Some other areas of interest include Asian disaporic literatures, multiculturalism, and postcolonial studies.
Passed unanimously.
7. Indigenous Language Revitalization Onowa McIvor discussed the University of Victoria’s Indigenous Language revitalization initiatives. After an extensive consultation, UVic developed a laddered undergraduate and graduate program in Aboriginal Languages revitalization in the Faculty of Education. This is a community-based program. The program requires a huge amount of fundraising as it is not funded by a base budget.
L. Wells suggested we need to take our initiatives national, and suggested forming a national organization for Indigenous Language revitalization. Wells also called members’ attention to the equity and diversity blog on the CFHSS website.
Discussion: S. Spearey suggested the possibility of making larger donations, perhaps online. R. Eigenbrod suggested that the fee should give back to the local Aboriginal community on whose territory Congress is held. D. Leahy supported idea of national network. M. Phung asked about outreach to linguistics association. S. Gingell said this was not one of the associations contacted.
J. Didur moved the funds be donated to UVic this year and next year. Discussion ensued. J. Adese suggested that donations don’t necessarily need to be connected to the university. M. Pirbhai suggested that language was the connecting theme. M. Fee suggested that the donation has to move. S. Spearey suggests that as Local Arrangements Coordinator, she can do some consulting on locating next year’s recipient. S. Spearey moves that the Local Arrangements Coordinator engage in a process of consultation in order to identify an appropriate local target for Indigenous Language revitalization donations at Congress 2014. Carried unanimously.
8. Childcare at Congress A. Guttman presented the following motion: 1. Whereas in 2012, no childcare arrangements were made for Congress in Waterloo; Whereas in 2013 local organizers chose not to make any childcare arrangements for Congress until late April, after receiving many letters of protest and a petition with hundreds of signatures; Whereas childcare is an equity issue, and the absence of childcare produces adverse effect discrimination which particularly impacts women and young academics We call on the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences to mandate that childcare is a compulsory part of the annual Congress that must be provided (or contracted) by the host institution. All host institutions should make plans to offer childcare across all age groups well in advance of Congress, and to publicize information about local childcare arrangements at the same time and with the same enthusiasm as other relevant information about travel, accommodation, and registration. AND 2. Whereas the childcare that was ultimately contracted for Congress 2013 cost $80 per day per child; Whereas childcare expenses cannot be funded through tri-council or university based grants Whereas other large organizations in the humanities and social sciences (such as the Modern Language Association and the Association of American Geographers) already offer childcare subsidies for their annual conferences; We call on the CFHSS to develop a subsidy program for graduate students and the underwaged. Moved by J. Leggatt. Seconded by J. Didur. Unanimously passed.
9. New Business Many thanks to S. Gingell for all her hard work as president of the association.
10. Adjournment Moved by S. Spearey. Seconded by P. McCallum. Carried unanimously.