University English Executive Committee Meeting
Friday 27 June 2014 at 2.30pm
Humanities Meeting Room, Chancellor’s Building
Keele University
Minutes
present
Susan Bruce (SB, chair), Linnie Blake, Delia Da Sousa Correa (DSC), Fiona Douglas,
Claire Hurley, Gordon McMullan (GMc), Will May, Alex Thomson, Alison Waller
apologies
Natasha Alden (NA), Katharine Cox (KC), Alison Findlay, Elspeth Graham, Juliet
John, Gail Marshall (GM), Jago Morrison (JM), Seamus Perry, Angelique Richardson,
Fiona Robertson, Ceri Sullivan, Kathryn White (KW)
NB The meeting was not quorate, so all decisions will be subsequently ratified via the
executive committee e-mail list.
1.
Minutes of Executive meeting of 3 April 2014
matters arising:
a) AHRC postgraduate data. We have data about funded postgraduate students from
AHRC, but this data would be more useful were the statistics presented by period,
geography, and then theoretical/critical field; it would also be helpful to have
clarification about the meaning of ‘classification by area’. We will approach AHRC to
ascertain whether they can provide us with data presented in these ways.
ACTION: SB
b) We need to judges for the University English Book Prize. SB and DSC will serve;
volunteers to be sought from other committee members. The conferral of the book
prize will be deferred to the AGM.
ACTION: SB
2.
Chair’s report
It has been a busy time since the AGM, not least because of renaming/rebranding.
Thanks were expressed to JM for creating the new logo; and to NA for setting up the
Twitter account (@univenglish), which has 170 followers already.
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3.
Our response to a Sunday Times article on the new OCR A-level Lang & Lit
syllabus had been published in short form in the paper and blogged in its full
form by the English and Media Centre, as well as tweeted by the EMC; the
EMC and OCR were very grateful for our intervention.
University English had identified and pointed out to The New Statesman that
an article in a recent edition borrowed very heavily from an article written last
year for THE by Eaglestone/Kovesi, which was now completely out of date.
We had alerted those colleagues to the issue and written to The New
Statesman pointing this out; our letter was not published, and no reply was
received, neither to our letter nor to a follow up communication requesting a
response.
We had submitted a letter to The Observer when they singled out English in
an article arguing that there were too many UK universities, but our letter was
sent in too late: unlike the dailies, which can accept material up to the evening
before, submissions to the Sundays appear to need to be sent of by the
Wednesday before.
University English played a significant role in coordinating the response to the
University of London’s plan to close the Institute of English Studies. This was
a huge amount of work (500 e-mails in four or five days), and resulted in a
suspension of the proposed closure. The IES has a year’s grace; further
interventions in future months will be necessary if it is to be protected beyond
this year. University English will send in a formal submission to any
consultation.
KC and KW had attended the training day for subject leaders of English &
Creative Writing day (run by Nicole King of HEA); it looks unlikely that HEA
will run Subject Networking Days in the future (more later under
Conferences).
Open Access: the issues were complex and opinions of the subject community
various; University English should ensure that it reports both sides of the
debate, rather than be partisan at this stage
Interim Treasurer’s report
See attached report from JM: 51 depts have paid; some depts that have paid before
haven’t paid this year. JM has created a paypal account.
JM: there have been continued problems with Lloyds Bank, including several
fraudulent transactions on the account; these have now been resolved. We discussed
whether or not continue banking with Lloyds, deciding that it is easier to stay with
them despite our reservations about their service. We minute our thanks to JM for the
work he has done trying to sort this out.
4.
Conferences and meetings
University English/EA joint conference. and OGM (Dec, one day), AGM (Easter,
two days).
We discussed GM’s tabled paper on the joint conference. Bob Eaglestone and Simon
Kovesi had been keen to hold the event in 2015; we thought this too soon and
preferred 2016. A steering group for the conference, led by Bob Eaglestone and GM
had been convened and had met; it had decided on the 2016 date, but subsequent to
that meeting it became obvious that that would clash with IAUPE and ESSE
conferences that year. The proposal now is to hold smaller events in 2015. It would
make more sense to hold a larger even in a year that did not clash with ESSE (eg in
2017). Location for the projected University English/EA conference, possible venues
mooted are Manchester, Newcastle or Leeds.
Meanwhile, we will plan capacity-building events to be sure what our peers want and
to establish strategies to avoid people going to their own period panels only.
OGM We propose to run a day-long event of this kind as the OGM, open to nonmembers as well as members, with a differential fee structure for member and non
member departments. We discussed potential topics, of general interest yet also
focused enough to make sure people attend. Suggestions included:
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Health of discipline/are we in decline?
Politics and English
Unity/diversity of English
Schools/universities
What we believe the discipline to be.
There was broad support for a focus addressing the unit/ diversity of English; and,
given the proximity of the election, for the AGM to focus on Politics and English.
Shape of day: exec meeting and dinner day before; business meeting to begin (one
hour); two panels of short position papers to get panel debate going, short abstracts
ideally to be circulated in advance, then open out to members: English across the
spectrum (WM/CH); English within departments (SB/GM); plenary lecture
(suggestions include Stefan Collini, Michael Rosen).
OGM: first weekend in December (5/6); exec meeting & dinner the night before.
Discussion of AGM to take place at OGM exec meeting.
ACTION: SB, JM FD to decide appropriate fee structure
ACTION: FD to book IES
ACTION: WM/ CH to identify and approach participants for panel one
ACTION: SB, GM to identify and approach participants for panel two
ACTION: SB to write to all HoDs about event
ACTION: FD to coordinate panels.
Europe (document previously circulated by David Duff ‘Notes on SAES conference
2014’). Suggestions in David Duff’s paper were discussed. The meeting agreed to
continue to invite individuals on the exec to attend European conferences and to invite
the President of ESSE (or delegate) to University English’s AGM, and to pursue
connections with Europe through other means, e.g. links on websites.
Early careers event: To be held in January 2015 at King’s College London. Topics
may include the landscape of English, introducing attendees to University English,
EA, Subject Centre, etc. Event to be designed for postdocs and young lecturers rather
than PhD students.
ACTION: GM to work with other exec members to fix a date and decide the
programme.
5.
Membership
There are 115 or so English departments; under half of these are currently members of
University English although there are 44 departments that have at some point in the
past participated. We hoped that opening up the OGM to non-member departments
might encourage departments to join; we also discussed coordinating approaches to
non-member departments. Further to an offer from AT, as regional rep, to contact
HoDs at non-member departments in Scotland, we decided to zone depts and divide
between us the process of making phone contact with HoDs based on an agreed list
of questions, including what we could do that would make non-member departments
wish to join. It was agreed that this process cannot begin until problems with the
website are sorted out.
Action: SB and FD to allocate institutions to exec members
Action: SB to draft letter to non-member department HoDs for committeee
members to send as initial approach.)
Action: exec members then to send email to current Head of Depts for which
they are responsible, and follow up with phone call a week later if there is no
response.
6.
Officers’ role descriptions; working-group affiliations
working groups: These are divided as follows:
a) Website/internet/social media: AW, GM, GMc, NA, CH
b) Research-related (inc OA, impact): AT, LB
c) Teaching-related (inc schools): SB, WM
d) Communications/public relations: SB, AR, GM, FD (first port of call for PR
questions as they arise)
role descriptions:
Action: role holders to write job descriptions and compare.
We need a deputy treasurer (AT to talk to JM to find out role of deputy). We agree
that we will ask an external professional to do the books.
Teaching buyout for officers in major roles (two hours per week). We agreed to this
in principle at last AGM; exec endorses this again, suggesting we do so for one
semester and then bring to members at December OGM business meeting. Agreed to
extend this to president and secretary for next semester, subject to the finances being
sufficient to cover this expense, and to explore funding other time-consuming tasks,
such as Twitter/ website work, and admin help for key projects.
7.
Website and internet presence
There were continuing problems with the website; the banner and some material has
been changed, but we need a new domain name so that the website will come up
when people search for ‘University English’. Paul Vetch has been asked to create new
domain name, and to give access details to NA, also to migrate the site onto
something we can more easily amend ourselves.
NA wants exec members to tweet; volunteers needed.
A Facebook page was discussed, and LB offered to set one up. (Working party should
discuss with LB.)
Action: AW, GM, GMc and NA to meet and make plan for website.
8.
Regional reports
None on this occasion.
From now on this will be a starred item on the agenda.
9.
AOB: none.
10.
Date of next meeting: 5 Dec 2014
Professor Gordon McMullan
Assistant Secretary, University English