March/April 2008 Newsletter In this Issue: Reminder from ESC..3 Victorian Review…….3 President’s Message Call for Papers………4 Steven Bruhm Mount Saint Vincent University Conference Announcement………6 Greetings from the eastern seaboard, where There is news from the Canadian spring is finally threatening to show up. I Federation for the Humanities and Social News of Members…..7 sincerely hope that all of you are getting re- Sciences. As a member of the Board of energized by the sun after a long winter Directors, I attended the board meeting in Conference term. Ottawa at the end of March. While there I Programme………….8 spoke with the Federation’s chief financial GSC Event……..….14 By now you will have had a chance to see officer about getting ACCUTE set up with the draft ACCUTE program on line at our on-line registration; it’s long been my wish AGM Agenda.……..30 website, and an exciting program it is. We that ACCUTE members have the option to had a massive reply to the general call for join or renew by simply presenting their Published by the papers, along with a very healthy slate of credit cards on line. The Fed’s financial Association of member-organized sessions. Moreover, person told me that she is currently Canadian College and University Teachers of we’ve teamed up with other organizations to negotiating with service providers to get the English vary the program even more. Some of the best rate for “ticket sales” for member notable alliances (notable because they organizations, and she’s hoping for a involve constituents who have historically be system in which organizations like ours President: Steven Bruhm Secretary-Treasurer: under-represented at ACCUTE) are with the don’t have to pay the credit card charges for Karen Macfarlane Canadian Association of American Studies, on-line use. This would be tremendously Coordinator: the Canadian Society of Medievalists, and useful for us, as it’s been user fees that Johanne Jell the Association for Research in Young have kept us from moving on line before People’s Texts and Cultures. We will hear this. Nothing has been signed yet, but the ACCUTE’S MANDATE from government bodies, feminist bodies, Federation hopes to have a system by Fall To promote the interests and dead bodies; we will observe the law 2008. Stay tuned. of those teaching and studying English and break it; we will consider sexuality not language and literatures just at the poles but somewhere in the As you’ll remember, this year ACCUTE in Canadian colleges and middle. Our plenaries, Lee Edelman and instituted an optional on-line submission universities by facilitating Tony Dawson, are gearing up to produce form for conference proposals and papers the dissemination and exciting addresses, and perhaps most and a mandatory vettor’s report form for exchange of research importantly, the party invitations are being evaluations. While these on-line forms have and the exploration of printed: you’ll want to attend “Seabash,” been very successful, we’ve been scooped professional issues, by ESC’s annual celebration on Saturday 31 by the Federation’s office staff. The Feds organizing scholarly and May at 6 pm; from there you might want to are now making available a process entitled professional meetings, by seeking to improve work join the Bricks Books Launch at 7; and then “Open Conference Systems (OCS)”, which of course there’s the ACCUTE dance party, will greatly simplify how we submit and vet conditions, by representing the interests “Ballroom Glitz,” on Monday 2 June at 8. proposals, and how we assemble and of members before (Please dress fabulously for this event but fashion a conference program. While it’s provincial and federal do not, under any circumstance, attempt to too early to tell when and how ACCUTE will decision-making bodies, outshine Karen Macfarlane. This entire take up this system (such decisions will be and by supporting the party is centered on her dress.) And on a for the new team at the University of interests and aspirations more sober note, please plan to attend the Toronto), you might want to take a look at of members entering the AGM on Monday at 3:45. The health of our what’s coming. Visit the Federation site at profession. association depends on your participation. www.fedcan.ca/congress2008/OCS.html. 1 ACCUTE Newsletter President’s Message, continued The last piece of news about Humanities—nay some ACCUTE— Congress is that it is attempting to people there. Noreen tells me they go green(er). In a bid to save are very well attended and very well resources, money, and the amount received. Don’t believe what you of detritus produced by such a large hear about bureaucrats: apparently event, the Federation and UBC are they ask wonderful questions and asking participants to bring more are really engaged with the topics. If and take less. Please bring an old you want more information, check conference bag to Congress; the out the Federation website: Feds are producing fewer this year. www.fedcan.ca/english/boh/. If Please bring a coffee cup or water you’re interested in giving a talk, bottle; we want to cut down on the please email Noreen Federation production and destruction of ([email protected]) and let her plastics. And please consider know. Her office will fly you to President environmentally friendly ways of Ottawa and put you up. getting to Vancouver. Canada’s Noreen current ecology movement has A final note, I want to draw your Golfman strong roots in the province of attention to Michael O’Driscoll’s British Columbia, and UBC would continues to memo directly below this column. like us to help make those roots look for There Mike talks about the grow. academics to importance of keeping ACCUTE up to date on your mailing address, as That’s it for Congress. On another participate in undelivered copies of ESC are being front, Federation President Noreen “Breakfast on destroyed. For our part here in the Golfman continues to look for office, we are about to put on line the the Hill.” academics to participate in 2008 ACCUTE Directory. As soon “Breakfast on the Hill.” What’s as we have done so, we’ll notify all of that?, you ask. “Breakfast on the you and ask you please to check Hill” is a Federation initiative in your mailing addresses as printed in which scholars in the Humanities the directory. Those addresses are and Social Sciences give short exactly what go to ESC for journal academic talks to politicians and delivery, so if yours is in error or out bureaucrats over breakfast on of date, let us know immediately and Parliament Hill. While the subject of we’ll fix it in our data base. these talks is open, it’s best if they deal with some sort of policy I’ll close here with a final good wish problem or social concern. So far and a hope to see many of you at the talks have been mostly by Social UBC. Scientists, but both Noreen and I would love to see some 2 ACCUTE Newsletter A REMINDER TO ESC READERS Please remember to keep your mailing addresses up to date. When ESC mails an issue to the wrong address, Canada Post destroys the issue and returns the torn cover to the journal (I know: horrifying!). That means that when we later receive word of an incorrect address, we need to send out a new issue (worth $20.00), and pay postage of around $8.00. That's an extraordinary expense for the journal. For this past issue, 32.2-3, we've now received a dozen requests for misdirected items; responding to those requests has cost ESC, then, in the neighbourhood of $336.00 (this does not include the cost of the destroyed issue). That's a lot of wasted money. Furthermore, our print run is only slightly in excess of our mailing list, as storage and unnecessary print costs are both concerns. When we process unfilled claims, we run the risk of depleting our stock and failing to fill back order requests in the future. So, again, please be sure to update any change of address by notifying the ACCUTE office ([email protected]) as soon as possible. Unfortunately, ESC will no longer be able to forward a second copy should the address on file be out of date. On a happier note: see you in Vancouver! Michael O'Driscoll Editor, ESC : English Studies in Canada Announcement Victorian Review Victorian Review is excited to announce its upcoming Spring 2008 issue on Victorian Things, with essays on Victorian material objects from the artificial leg to the hard-core pornographic stereograph. This issue brings you an A-Z of Victorian material culture, with essays by Canadian academics Vanessa Warne, Michael Tavel Clarke, Katharine Anderson, Jennifer Blair, Anne Clendenning, Cristopher Kent, and Colette Colligan alongside work by international scholars such as Talia Schaffer, John Picker, and Elaine Freedgood. To subscribe, see our website: http://web.uvic.ca/victorianreview/. You can now subscribe via credit card. 3 ACCUTE Newsletter Call for Papers ESC - SKIN ESC: English Studies in Canada invites proposals for the following Special Issue, guest edited by Prof. Julia Emberley, University of Western Ontario. SKIN. The taxidermist’s medium, the bioengineer’s super structure, a word for a chromatic history of racial difference, a surface of adornment, a term for online software designs, an object of animal capital -- skin proves itself an elastic and regenerative concept, material and signifier. ESC invites proposals for a special issue on SKIN from scholars/writers/artists with an interest in the animate and inanimate properties, theories and applications of ‘skin.’ Interdisciplinary approaches are most welcome as is work from such fields as, but not limited to, eco-criticism, critical race studies, cyberculture, fashion theory, queer studies, biopolitics and semiotics.