Comparative Literature Association of Ireland Associazione irlandese per la letteratura comparata Association irlandaise de littérature comparée
	About News/Forum Courses & Places Projects Links Membership Home

CLAI Opening Meeting.....

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND:
THE FIRST MINUTES

A meeting was held on 24 November 2007 in room 5052 of the Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin, to discuss the formation of a network or association for Comparative Literature and related fields in Ireland.

17 people attended (names and addresses from the attendance sheet; subject affiliations may be slightly inaccurate):

Jean-Philippe Imbert, French, SALIS, DCU
Sam Slote, English, TCD
Ivana Milivojevic, currently attached to NUI Maynooth
Victoria Ríos Castaño, Spanish, SLL, University of Ulster (Magee campus)
Rania Kosmidou, researching film in the SLLF/HII at UCD
Mark Quinn, researching Pynchon in English Department, UCD
Diana Perez Garcia, UCD & St Patrick's Drumcondra
Jana Fischerova, researching Irish & Czech literature & censorship, UCD
Declan Kiberd, Anglo-Irish, UCD
Anne Fuchs, German, SLLF, UCD
Tony Coulson, German, SALIS, DCU
Caitriona Leahy, German, TCD
Marieke Krajenbrink, German, LCS, UL
Michael G. Kelly, French, LCS, UL
Barbara Geraghty, Japanese, LCS, UL
Bruce Swansey, Spanish, SALIS, DCU
Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, Italian, TCD

Although we didn't formally note "Apologies", we were aware of several other people who would have liked to be present: Brigitte Le Juez (DCU), Philip Coleman (TCD), Phyllis Gaffney (UCD), Emer O'Beirne (UCD), and Sarah Smyth (TCD). (There may be several names missing here; some people have been added to the mailing addresses above, and everyone should please feel free to forward these "Minutes" to other interested parties -- whom we would have invited to the meeting had we had more time. Nobody should feel excluded.)

Thanks were expressed to Brigitte, and also to Diana, Mark, Sarah and Cormac, for their preliminary work.

From the first round of introductions, it was clear that there is already a great energy surrounding comparative cultural studies in Irish institutions; the formation of an association is timely.

Jean-Philippe provided a working agenda, to which a couple of items were added.

1. THE NAME

Various possible names for the group were debated, in an attempt to be neither too vague nor too narrow. Out of almost a dozen possibilities, we finally came back to Brigitte's original proposal: CLAI (Comparative Literature Association of Ireland); we may add a subtitle such as "Literatures, Arts, Cultures, Film" to amplify the areas in which the group gets involved over the years. The importance of constructing Web texts that catch Google searches into any of our areas was also noted.

2. THE WEBSITE

Jean-Philippe distributed texts for the Web site, written by Brigitte with input also from Mark and Diana. he outlined a site structure related to the one used by http://www.eurolit.org/ -- links from the home page could include members, announcements, institutions, events, courses, discussion forum. Members should be able to submit their own CVs. The desirability of an on-line journal was discussed, but it was felt that this might not be an immediately achievable aim; further discussion of a journal is recorded at below under item 4. The web site will continue to be developed by Brigitte and Jean-Philippe, with assistance from Cormac on Dreamweaver. Anne will inquire about the possibility of getting a full design job done, for a proper fee. We should aim to have at least some pages of the Web site available in a wide variety of languages.

3. NETWORK OR ASSOCIATION?

This issue had effectively been decided by the choice of name under item 1.

4. ACTIVITIES

A broad menu of desirable activities was noted:

a) a biennial conference, rotating between different institutions, and running in the year when the Royal Irish Academy is not holding its biennial Modern Languages Conference. Ideally, it should not be held during term time. Perhaps start with a one-day Symposium, and then plan an international conference second time around?

b) coordinating invitations to speakers from abroad, to maximize their impact (a typical pattern might be one talk in Dublin, one in another centre). This could be done partly by networking with our sister organizations in other countries (see (d) below).

c) exploring different national versions of comparative literature by getting guest speakers through embassies and similar channels. This would involve maintaining contact with embassies, missions and cultural institutes from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Quebec, etc.

d) maintaining contact with our sister organizations and counterparts abroad (European Network for Comparative Literary Studies, ACLA, ICLA, etc.), exchanging Web links etc. (see http://www.acla.org/associations.html).

e) developing strong links with different institutions (e.g. the ones represented at the meeting, but also QUB, UCC, NUIG, WIT, etc.) but also with individuals with comparative literature and Irish connections, or others who might be well disposed.

f) a peer-reviewed Journal: desirable but problematic. It was suggested that a paper journal would attract the best contributions, but involve a large financial investment and be too expensive for libraries, whereas a free Web-based journal might be cheaper but less attractive to scholars. One way of getting into publication might be to produce a year book and include its cost in the annual subscription, or to publish the proceedings of our first Symposium in printed form.

g) holding a postgraduate study day in the year when we are not having a conference.

h) organizing workshops with students, possibly given by visiting speakers, or together with the postgraduate Study Day, or as joint workshops between Master's-level courses in the early summer when people are starting on their minor dissertations.

i) compiling lists of relevant information: this is something that can start right away, and Mark offered to compile a master list of forthcoming events from information supplied to him at mark.quinn@ucd.ie -- the results could go up on an early version of the Web pages.

5. MEMBERSHIP, RECRUITMENT AND FORMAL FOUNDATION

It is essential to build up the widest possible membership for the Association. Once we started talking about raising membership fees, it was decided that we should move quickly to set up proper structures with a Constitution, a Treasurer and other officers (President, Secretary, etc.), and to register ourselves as a charity or nonprofit with the relevant authorities. For this purpose, producing some of our information in Irish would be relevant (we would be doing this anyway under (2) above).

Membership fees might be set (in euros) at 30 for staff, 15 for postgraduate and retired members, possibly with a reduction for groups of 5 or more. [These figures might also need to be expressed in pounds sterling.] There should be a higher institutional membership fee payable by educational and cultural institutions. The possibility of raising money from sponsors was mentioned but not discussed.

Our Constitution should be presented to the next formal meeting of the group. It was felt undesirable to delay founding the Association formally until then. A motion proposed by Anne and seconded by Barbara, "that the CLAI be founded", was adopted unanimously.

To develop the membership a Chief Recruiting Officer was appointed: Diana Perez Garcia. Diana's principal liaison people for different institutions will be: St Patick's Drumcondra - herself; UCD - Anne; UL - Marieke; DCU - Jean-Philippe; TCD - Sam; NUIM - Ivana; UU and QUB - Victoria. but it remains to find suitable liaison people for NUIG, UCC, etc.

We should be inclusive in our recruitment efforts, approaching colleagues in areas like Irish, Classics, film studies, medieval studies and other naturally comparative areas.

6. NEXT STEPS

A working group is to prepare the following for the launch meeting, to be held in March 2008: (i) a Constitution; (ii) the legal and other structures required to support our activities; (iii) a first version of the Web site; (iv) membership forms and other documentation.

The working group will consist of: Brigitte, Diana/Mark, Anne, Caitriona/Cormac, Michael, Victoria. this represents teaching staff and researchers, as well as covering 6 different institutions.

7. THE END

There being no other business, the meeting concluded.

NB - Apologies for any errors or omissions. Minutes compiled by Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. These notes were typed partly by using the IBM ViaVoice dictation system, which can introduce bizarre additional mistakes (e.g. "awful design job" for "a full design job" -- but I caught that one).