AGM Minutes 2013


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EASLCE General Membership Meeting 2013 Minutes

Location: ASLE-UKI 2013 Conference Ecological Encounters: Agency, Identity, Interactions; University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom

Date: Saturday, August 31st, 2013, 12:40-1:30 p.m.

Attendees: Hannes Bergthaller (President), Juan Ignacio Oliva (Vice-President); Members: Axel Goodbody, Carmen Flys-Junquera, Paloma Villamil Agraso, Sieglinde Grimm, Peter Mortensen, Catrin Gersdorf, Isabel Hoving, Serenella Iovino, Maria Isabel Pérez Ramos, Terry Gifford, Felicity Hand, Diana Villanueva Romero, Uwe Küchler (minutes); Guests: Nicole Seymour, Heidi Danzl

1. Acceptance of the minutes of the 2012 AGM and the agenda for this meeting:

The minutes of the last general annual meeting and the agenda for this meeting were accepted unanimously.

2. Annual Reports of the Executive Committee

President Hannes Bergthaller reported on the activities of the executive committee in the past twelve
months as well as on current projects and strategic planning.
The executive committee is in contact with NIES (Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies), the Rachel-Carson-Center in Munich (Germany) and the newly formed Environmental Humanities Lab at the University of Leiden (Netherlands) regarding the establishing of closer cooperation and the co-organizing of conferences. Furthermore, contact with the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) was established to organize a series of joint online book reviews.

A third Webinar – EASLCE’s innovative online discussion format – with the title “Embodied

Narratives: Theory and Practice of Material Ecocriticism” was hosted by Serenella Iovino in the Spring.

Future webinars are in preparation (with Greg Garrard, Greta Gaard and Joni Adamson). Members are invited to raise further ideas for Webinars and organize them with interested scholars. The initial difficulties with registering for a webinar have been fixed.

An updated Membership Directory will be published very soon. Members are asked to update their information. This can be done by editing their profile on the EASLCE website. The executive committee represented EASLCE at the biannual conferences of ASLE (Lawrence, Kansas) and ESEH (Munich), as well EAAS (Moscow, Russia).

3. Annual Report of the Treasurer

President Hannes Bergthaller presented the financial report for treasurer Alexa Weik von Mossner, who could not attend the conference and membership meeting. The membership for EASLCE has gone up remarkably, by almost 50%; the organization currently has 103 members.

A detailed overview of all financial transactions and account balances for the financial year 2012 was introduced, including expenses in 2012 and projected expenses in 2013. The books were audited and approved by Sylvia Mayer. The assembly accepted the treasurer’s report unanimously.

4. Proposal to Affirm Decisions of the 2012 AGM

Legal requirements made it necessary to reaffirm the decisions of the last AGM in 2012 and to reaffirm them, especially the elections of executive committee and advisory board. The membership unanimously reaffirmed the decisions of the 2012 AGM.

5. Proposal to Change the Bylaws

The proposed changes in the bylaws, as outlined in the invitation to the AGM (see addendum to these minutes), were accepted unanimously.

6. Report on the Current State of the EASLCE Website

The report of the current state of the EASLCE Website was already included in the President’s report.

7. Report on ECOZON@

In the period under review, EASLCE’s electronic journal ECOZON@ has seen a significant enlargement of its advisory board. Mainly international scholars were considered in order to enlarge the scope of topics covered and decrease the workload of peer reviewers. Furthermore, changes in the internet (indexing) increased the accessibility of the journal and its articles via common search engines. Many technical improvements made the navigation of the journal’s website, the handing in of articles and the processing of peer reviews a lot easier. ECOZON@ takes pleasure in the fact that the issues are all set until the year 2015, issues are planned as follows:

Issue 4.2 Autumn 2013 Mediterranean Ecocriticism. Guest Editor: SerenellaIovino. Universitá di Torino.

(Deadline for submissions closed).

Issue 5.1 Spring 2014 Translating Environmental Humanities. Guest Editor: Carmen Valero. Universidad de

Alcalá. (Deadline for submissions closed August 10, 2013)

Issue 5.2 Autumn 2014 Northern Nature. Guest Editor: Werner Bigell. Finnmark University College,

Norway (Deadline for submissions January 15, 2014)

Issue 6.1 Spring 2015 European New Nature Writing. Guest Editors: Terry Gifford and Anna Stenning.

University Bath Spa/Universidad de Alicante and University of Worcester (CFP comes out in Spring 2013 and closes July 15, 2014)

Issue 6.2 Autumn 2015 Artistic Interventions in Landscapes: The Art of Repairing and Preserving the Environment.

Guest Editors: Tonia Raquejo and José Parreño. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. (CFP comes out in Autumn 2013 and closes Jan. 15, 2015)

8. Report on Graduate Student Essay Prize

Members are asked to spread the word about EASLCE’s Graduate Student Essay Prize. In the past two years, the dearth of qualified applications created considerable difficulties. Members are particulary advised to point out that applications for the prize are not restricted to EASLCE’s membership. The president suggests to change the Call for Submissions as follows: “The author must either be enrolled at a European university, or the essay must engage explicitly with European literature or ecocritical theory.”The assembly unanimously accepted this change in wording.

9. Report on State of Preparations for the 2014 Conference in Tartu

The President informs the assembly that due to a competing conference in the city of Tartu and subsequent difficulties with providing accommodation for EASLCE conference attendees, the original schedule for the conference is no longer viable. The local organizers and the executive committee have therefore agreed on a new date for the biannual conference: April 29th – May 3rd 2014. The deadline for the call for proposals can therefore also be pushed backa little, an issue that the organizers will discuss in the near future.

10. Further Issues: Topic Suggestions for 2015

Questions to be discussed at next year’s Annual General Membership Meeting:

– Could EASLCE sponsor off-year conferences in continental Europe? In return, those conferences could serve as a venue for the AGM and would thus ease attendance of members.

– If members have suggestions for further items to be discussed at next year’s AGM, please contact the Executive Committee.

Signed and submitted to the district court at Bonn,

Hannes Bergthaller, Chair
Juan Ignacio Oliva, Vice-chair
Uwe Küchler, Keeper of the Minutes

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AGM Minutes 2013


FURTHER READING

Ecozon@

Ecozon@ is a journal devoted to the relatively new field of literary and cultural criticism called ecocriticism. Ecocriticism can be broadly defined as the study of the representations of nature in cultural texts, and of the relationship between humans with other earth beings and their environment as seen in cultural manifestations. 

ARCADIANA

Arcadiana is a blog about the environment in literature and culture. It is hosted by postgraduate members of the European Association for Literature, Culture and the Environment (EASLCE).