CENTRAL EUROPEAN STEERING COMMITTEE FOR CANADIAN STUDIES
Sixth meeting of
the CESCCS
Grainau, Germany
15 February 2002
Report
Participants
Don Sparling (the Czech Republic) [DS]
Monica Bottez (Romania) [MB]
Maria Huttova (Slovakia) [MH]
Ljiljana Matic (Yugoslavia) [LM]
Judit Molnar (Hungary) [JM]
Agniezska Rzepa (Poland) [AR]
Katalin Kurtosi (Central European Journal of
Canadians Studies) [KK]
Guest
Catherine Bastedo-Boileau - Executive Director, ICCS
1. Opening
The meeting opened at 9:05.
2 Adoption of the agenda
The agenda was adopted as presented.
3. Approval of the Report on the Bucharest meeting
DS reported that Jean Labrie had informed him that
Gaetan Vallieres of the ICCS had pointed out an error regarding ICCS programmes
(item 7 in the Bucharest Report); in fact ICCS programmes are open to all ICCS
members, both full and associate.
Otherwise the Report was approved as presented.
4. Financial report
There were two points up for discussion under this
item: i) the report on the current
balance to 10 February 2002, and ii) the grant request for 2002/2003.
i) The financial report for the period since the
Bucharest conference showed a balance of 10,936.40 CAD (see Appendix 1). The cost of the Bucharest Steering Committee
meeting had been slightly higher than provided for in the budget (2,375 CAD as
opposed to 2,200 CAD), even though one of the Steering Committee members had
been unable to attend.
In line with advice given by Jean Labrie at the
Bucharest meeting, DS had applied for a supplementary grant of 3,400 CAD to
cover the cost of publishing the Proceedings of the Bucharest meeting
and to allow the Steering Committee members to spend an extra night at Grainau
so as to have a full day for their meeting. The request had been met.
As usual, this February financial report is deceptive
in indicating a rather large balance so close to the end of the fiscal year.
This is because a major portion of the CESCCS budget goes towards the Grainau
meeting of the Steering Committee and the presence of the Central European
Canadianists at the GKS conference. In addition, the current balance includes
2,700 CAD earmarked for the Bucharest Proceedings. DS estimated that the
final balance at the end of the 2001/2002 fiscal year would be about 1,250 CAD.
ii) In the discussion on the budget proposal for
2002/2003, Steering Committee members recommended that, in addition to the
usual items (including the publication of the second volume of the CEJCS),
there be provision for a meeting of the Editorial Board of the journal, which
could be held relatively cheaply in a convenient CE location.
5. Central European Canadian Studies Secretariat, Brno
i) Initiatives
a)
DS reported that no CE Canadianists had come to the
Brno Secretariat to make use of the CS facilities there in the interval since
the Bucharest meeting; he would republicize this possibility on the CE
listserve. He had, however, been able to donate about thirty copies of books of
which the Brno Centre had extra copies to Canadianists in Romania and
Yugoslavia.
b)
It had not been possible so far to ensure that, when
people were using Google and Yahoo search engines, and typed in the key phrases
“Central Europe” and “Canadian Studies", the CE homepage would appear at
the top of, or high up on, the list. (The problem seems to be that the name has
"European" rather than "Europe"). However, Petr Vurm is still looking into this.
c)
It was suggested that when publications related to
Canadian Studies appear in the region, a copy might be sent to the Secretariat
in Brno. Their presence in one place should prove convenient for researchers.
DS also suggested that the Secretariat could try to put together an annual
bibliography of new books in the region (translations included), on the basis of
reports from the individual Steering Committee members.
d)
In connection with FRP and FEP grants as well as the
grants for research at the J.F. Kennedy Centre in Berlin, Steering Committee
members felt it would be useful to post the names of the recipients of these
grants on the Network homepage. This could encourage more Canadianists in the
region to apply for these grants, and also enable them to get in touch with
individuals who had already received them with questions or when seeking advice
or whatever kind. DS agreed to do so.
ii) Class-set grants
It was reported that there had been some problems with
the shipping of class sets; even though the applications had been approved in
April/May, some Centres only received their sets towards the end of the autumn
semester (the plan had been for them to be available for the beginning of
semester in September), or even later. DS said he would speak to Nancy Hector
about this.
DS reported that M-LC had said that the programme
would go ahead for at least another year. The original suggestion had been for
a five-year period. This year would be the third; an interim assessment would
be made on the success of the programme.
iii) Journals from BACS
DS had spoken with Tim Rooth, the President-elect of
the British Association for Canadian Studies concerning the BACS journals that
were supposed to be sent to various CS Centres in CE. TR had checked this out,
and reported that second sets had been reassembled in Edinburgh (the first had
been destroyed in floods) and would be posted shortly. He would ask her to
inform him when they had been sent off.
6. CS developments in Central Europe
The practice of dealing with developments in Canadian
Studies in Central Europe in the form of previously prepared country reports that
are handed out to the Steering Committee members having proved so effective in
Bucharest, it was followed again. Each of the participants spoke very briefly,
indicating some of the main points in their respective reports. The country
reports are included here as Appendixes 2-8.
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At this point Catherine Bastedo-Boileau, the new
Executive Director of the ICCS, joined the meeting. She met the SC members, and
spoke briefly about the ICCS and its wish to cooperate closely with the Network
in promoting Canadian Studies in the CE region.
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7. Conferences
i) Report on Bucharest conference, 26-28 October 2002
MB presented the final financial report on the
conference (see Appendix 9). The conference showed a surplus of 2,250 CAD; this
was largely due to the fact that, in the post-September 11 atmosphere, a
considerable number of people cancelled their participation. DS had been in
touch with M-LC with suggestions for how this surplus should be used; in the
end it was decided to put it against the cost of the 3rd International
Conference of Central European Canadianists in Krakow in 2004.
MB distributed a second report on the conference,
which included an evaluation of the event. Steering Committee members had
suggestions for a few additions; MB promised to incorporate these in the
report, which she would send to DS. It is included here as Appendix 10; the
conference programme is attached as Appendix 11.
The members of the Steering Committee expressed their
thanks to MB for all she and her team had done to make the conference the great
success that they all felt it had been.
ii) Debrecen conference (October 2002)
JM reported that the organizers expect about forty
foreign participants in the conference, in addition to the Hungarian
Canadianists. DS asked how exactly the conference was being financed; JM was
not sure, but said Peter Szaffko, who was in charge, had a great deal of
experience in organizing events of this type and would certainly be drawing on
a variety of sources. DS pointed out that as far as he knew Ottawa had not been
approached yet; if the organizers expected funding from DFAIT it was high time
to make an application. He also stressed that if a large sum was required, then
this would have repercussions for Canadianists in the region as a whole, since
it would have to come out of the special CE budget; for that reason, it was
desirable for major events in the region to be at least discussed. JM said more
detailed information on the event would certainly be distributed shortly.
DS added that the ENCS had confirmed that it wishes to
hold its graduate seminars as separate events, and not linked with other
events; as a result, since the suggestion of the organizers of the Debrecen
conference had been to hold the 9th graduate seminar in conjunction with the
Debrecen conference, the ENCS, at its meeting in December 2001, had decided to
withdraw its proposal to hold the seminar there in 2002. At that same meeting,
moreover, the GKS had reminded those present that approval had previously been
given for the 2002 seminar to be held in Germany. Plans now call for the 9th
seminar to take place in Berlin sometime in autumn 2002. The ENCS did stress, however, that it would
remain open in future to proposals for the seminar to be held in Central
Europe.
iii) Krakow conference (3rd International
Conference of Central European Canadianists), 2004
a) Budget.
DS had received a "preliminary cost
estimate" for the 3rd International Conference of Central European
Canadianists, to be held in the spring of 2004 in Krakow, from Anna Reczynska,
who will be organizing the event. During discussion, the following points were
touched upon.
●
Accommodation costs were higher than in Bucharest, but that was
inevitable since Polish prices generally are higher than those in Romania.
● The
suggested conference fee of 150 CAD was criticized as being far too high, and
least for Canadianists in most of the CE countries. In Bucharest, for example,
it had been 35 USD (teachers) and 15 USD (students) - about 55 CAD and 23 CAD
respectively. It was agreed that the
fee should be more in line with the Bucharest figure.
●
Non-Central European participants should be expected to pay for
accommodation and meals, or have a different conference fee, since they did not
need the degree of subsidization given to the CE participants.
● Travel
costs had not been included in the budget. DS explained that this had also been
true in the past. Local Canadian embassies had helped with travel costs of
academics to the conferences in Brno and Bucharest; money remaining from the
9th graduate seminar in Brno had been used to help graduate students with their
travel costs to Bucharest. Hopefully similar arrangements would be worked out
for the 2004 conference.
● This
event would in fact be both the 3rd international CE conference and the 3rd
Polish Association congress. In other words, DFAIT would be funding only one
event instead of the two that it had funded in 2001 (i.e. the Polish
Association conference in Torun in April and the international CE conference in
Bucharest in October). This should be taken into account by DFAIT when deciding
on funding levels.
b) Other points
● The
suggested date was Friday 30 April - Sunday 2 May. DS pointed out that if the same
organization scheme was followed as at Torun, with the programme beginning at
9.00 a.m. on Friday, many participants (including all non-Poles) would probably
have to arrive on Thursday, which would mean one more night's accommodation.
This would affect the budget.
● There
was some discussion on the subject of a theme for the event. The word
"variety" seemed attractive, but no concrete proposal was agreed on.
● As far
as the organization was concerned, some people felt that it would be useful to
have a special session for doctoral students; others felt that including them
in regular sessions gave them more "legitimacy". It was also pointed
out that in some cases the quality of doctoral students' work was at least as
good as that of teachers!
iv) Participation in Grainau
a) 2002
It was pointed out that there was some confusion in
the instructions for applications this year, in that some people applied to the
local Canadian Embassy, and some to the Steering Committee representative; in
future, if CE Canadianists come to Grainau, the applications should go to both
the Embassy and the SC rep, to avoid confusion.
b) Future
DS informed the participants that the GKS and Ottawa
were reconsidering the practice of the past few years, of having twenty CE
Canadianists present annually. For one thing, the interest among GKS members in
attending the conference continues to grow, but the Hotel am Badersee has
reached capacity limits (in terms of catering facilities and rooms for
conference sessions). The twenty places taken by CE Canadianists means that
twenty GKS members are unable to attend their own conference. A second
consideration is that CS has grown considerably, and that perhaps CE
Canadianists are not as greatly in need of attending Grainau, the main purpose
of which has been to introduce them to the wider international community of
Canadianists.
Steering Committee members said that, though they
recognized the validity of the above arguments, they felt that the chance to
attend the Grainau conference was still extremely important for CE
Canadianists. Many new ties continued to be made every year, particularly with
the current policy of giving priority to bringing to Grainau CE Canadianists
who had not been there before. In addition a key reason for the success of the GKS
Outreach Programme was that the CE Canadianists could discuss lectures tours
and intensive courses with the individuals in person. Finally, Grainau offered
a unique opportunity to meet with people from DFAIT and the Canadian embassies
in CE; this was extremely valuable, especially for the Steering Committee. The
feeling was that if changes were to be made in the current policy, they should
be well thought out, and that CE Canadianists should not be cut off from the
chance to attend Grainau absolutely.
DS said he would be speaking later with Marie-Laure de
Chantal, and would express their views to her. In the subsequent meeting with
her, he stressed the reasons in favour of maintaining CE links with
Grainau. ML agreed, saying that the idea was not to
eliminate the CE presence at Grainau, or to cut off support for CE Canadianists
in general. Certainly she felt that it was important for the Steering
Committee. But it might also be possible instead to change the funding so as to
allow CE Canadianists the opportunity to attend other conferences
besides/instead of Grainau; this way they could actually choose events that
matched their interests more closely. She would also have to check out in
Ottawa what forms of support might be possible. It was agreed to carry on the
discussion by e-mail, so that a concrete proposal could be included in the
request for the 2002/2003 grant.
In order to show Ottawa the continuing importance of
Grainau for CS in the CE region, SC members were asked to prepare lists of how
the presence of CE Canadianists in Grainau had benefited CS in their respective
countries. DS would then work these comments into a general statement.
8. Publications
i) The Proceedings of the Bucharest conference
MB distributed the papers that had been submitted so
far to members of the SC, who agreed to find readers in their respective
countries. Each paper will be read by two persons. The SC members were given
till 12 April to inform MB of the readers’ evaluations and (any) comments.
It was agreed that the Proceedings would be
published in Brno, using the same design as for the Brno volume. In this way, a
series would be created for the triennial event.
ii) CE Journal of Canadian Studies
Since the deadlines for submission of material to the
CE journal and the Bucharest volume were so close in time, it was decided that
it would be desirable to extend the deadline for submission to the Journal.
KK as editor-in-chief agreed; Monday 18 March was agreed on. DS said he would
immediately send out this information on the CE listserve.
The contributions are being submitted to the
Secretariat in Brno. DS said that he would then make a complete list of the
contributions and e-mail it to KK, who would contact people to read them; the
appropriate papers would then be sent out from the Brno Secretariat. For the
first volume of the journal, each contribution had been read by several
individuals, the reason being that the Steering Committee wanted to start
publication by ensuring that there was no doubt as to why papers had been
selected or rejected. This time KK felt two readers per paper was enough, with
an additional reader should the reports differ widely. KK reported that the readers would be
members of the editorial board, with others called upon for fields not covered
by the editorial board members. All people involved in reading reports or
providing other support would be included in the advisory board for the
respective issue.
[The
morning session ended at 12.30]
[The
meeting reconvened after lunch at 1.45]
iii) Proceedings of European graduate seminar
(Brno, October 2000)
DS thanked the SC members for seeing to the
evaluations of the papers from the European seminar for
graduate students in Canadian Studies held in Brno in October 2000. A
total of fourteen papers had been accepted; editing was proceeding. The publication of the volume was linked
with the following point on the agenda.
iv) Other European
graduate student seminars
DS informed the SC members that at the most recent meeting
of the ENCS, in December, there had been a discussion of the question of
publishing the papers from the annual European seminars for
graduate students in Canadian Studies. In some cases these had been published,
on others not; funding was irregular. Since there was general agreement that
the Brno Proceedings and CE Journal of Canadian Studies were very
attractive, and had been produced at a reasonable cost, DS had suggested that
the annual grant for the seminar should include a sum for publication of a
selection of the papers, and had offered to publish these proceedings regularly
from the Secretariat in Brno. The idea had been accepted; the first one to be
published would be from the seminar in Belfast in 1998. Robert Thomsen of
Aarhus University, one of the editors of the papers from that conference, would
also see to a design that could be used for the series.
9. Lecture tours
i) Grainau speakers 2002
DS explained why the lecture tours with speakers
coming to Grainau in 2002 had not materialized: preparations had begun too
late, so that speakers already had other plans; in some cases only one venue
could be found for a particular speaker, which was not really enough to justify
what was supposed to be a "tour"; in other cases, summer semesters at
universities began too late for the Canadian Studies Centres to take advantage
of the speakers' presence; and finally, some universities lacked the funds to
cover local costs (accommodation, meals). It was agreed that if we wanted
speakers coming to Grainau to take part in tours in future, we would have to
ask the GKS to get provisional agreement from the speakers very early on in the
selection process, so as to give everyone enough time to plan such visits.
As part of this, the SC members were asked to give the
approximate times when semesters in their countries begin and end. These are as
follows:
Winter semester Spring semester
Czech Republic 25 September - 20 December 15
February - 20 May
Hungary 10 September - 15 December 1
February - 15 May
Poland 5 October - 20 January 10 February - 31 May
Romania 1 October - 20 January 20 February - 31 May
(MA students - 1 May)
Slovakia October - November End of February - April
Yugoslavia 10 October - 15 January 15
February - 31 May
ii) Future tours
DS reported that he had been in touch by e-mail with
Dirk Hoerder, who is in charge of the GKS Outreach Programme. He suggested that it might be best to organize some
tours with German academics, which would give us experience in arranging such
things that could then be applied to, for example, tours by Grainau speakers.
DS said he would be speaking to DH later at the Grainau conference, and would
report back.
Note: The suggestion made by DH was for a tour, or
tours, involving one or more of three women academics in the fields of social
geography, multiculturalism and gender studies. One possible date would be the
second week of October; the visits might take the form of lectures or full one
to two day seminars. The best thing would be for a tour to concentrate in a
particular region of CE - north-central, central-central or south-central, to
cut travel time. The GKS would cover travel costs, local centres would be
responsible for accommodation and if possible per diems for meals. DS said he
would discuss this with SC members.
10. Class-set grants (2001, 2002)
DS said he assumed the class-set grant programme would
continue this year (the original suggestion had been for a five-year period).
It had also been suggested by Marie-Laure de Chantal and Nancy Hector at DFAIT
that there should be an evaluation later this year to see how successful the
programme had been. DS would be in toucb with NH and ML to confirm that the
programme was going ahead; if so, he would send out announcements early in
April. It was suggested that the instructions should make it even clearer what
class sets were intended for, as well as the fact that a centre or university
could only ask for one class-set grant or one library support programme grant
per year.
11. CE Association of Canadian Studies
Most of the afternoon was taken up with discussion of
a draft constitution for the new CE Canadian Studies Association. DS had prepared this before the Grainau
meeting, on the basis of comments made at the SC in Bucharest, and circulated
it to the SC members. The draft constitution was examined point by point, and a
number of suggestions and changes were made.
It was agreed that DS would incorporate the changes
and then send this revised version to SC members for their approval. This
version would then be sent out on the CE listserve to all Canadianists in CE.
On the basis of their comments, a final version would be approved by the SC.
12. Next meeting of the Steering Committee
JM extended the invitation of the organizers of the Debrecen
conference to hold the next meeting there in conjunction with that event. The
SC members agreed; details will be fixed later.
13. Closing
The meeting came to an end at 5:15.
As in the past few years, a meeting was held on
Saturday afternoon that brought together all twenty Central European
Canadianists at Grainau, as well as personnel from the Canadian Embassies in
the CE region who were also present. Alan Bowker, Director, Academic Relations,
DFAIT, Marie-Laure de Chantal, International Academic Relations, DFAIT, and
Catherine Bastedo-Boileau, ICCS Executive Director, also spoke.
The meeting opened with Ursula Mathis and Elke Nowak
of the GKS welcoming the CE Canadianists and expressing confidence that
cooperation between the GKS and the countries to the east would continue to
develop in future, though perhaps some of the current forms of cooperation
would be replaced. After their introductory words, Don Sparling gave a brief
survey of the development of Canadian Studies in the Central European region
since the mid-nineties, stressing the importance of the GKS and, in the early
stages in particular, the European Network for Canadian Studies. He also
outlined the activities developed by the Steering Committee; noting the crucial
support given by the ICCS and the Academic Relations Division of DFAIT in all
this, he welcomed the presence of representatives from these two key agents for
the development of Canadian Studies. Catherine Bastedo-Boileau then touched on
the main kinds of support offered by the ICCS for Canadian Studies activities,
and urged those present to check out the ICCS website for more detailed
information concerning relevant programmes. She was followed by Alan Bowker,
who spoke at some length about the role of DFAIT in supporting Canadian
Studies, stressing that it was there to promote, not to instigate, the
discipline: the initiative had to come from the Canadianists themselves.
Marie-Laure de Chantal backed him up on this, and focused more specifically on
the various DFAIT programmes that have been developed for Canadianists
worldwide. Finally, DS spoke about the three programmes which he felt were of
most immediate benefit to Canadianists in Central Europe, especially those who,
like the majority of CE Canadianists present, were fairly new to the field: the
class-set programme, the FRP and FEP grants, and the grants for research stays
at the J.F. Kennedy Institute in Berlin.