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UNESCO

The FILLM Newsletter

Volume 1 | December 2014

The New FILLM Newsletter

This is the first volume of the Newsletter of the Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures (FILLM). Welcome!

In recent years, FILLM has gone through a process of self-examination, scrutinizing its activities and purpose in a rapidly changing world. One outcome of these considerations has been the development of a distinct communication policy: communication is now a cornerstone of the federation, key to all it wishes to achieve. This new focus has among other things resulted in a complete overhaul of the federation’s website and now the creation of The FILLM Newsletter.

The
Newsletter should mainly be seen as a forum, a place that brings together the academic associations affiliated with FILLM. Currently, this means the federation’s eleven member associations:

  • ACLALS - Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies
  • AILC - Association Internationale de Littérature Comparée
  • AISLLI - Associazione internazionale per gli studi di lingua e letteratura italiana
  • ALFAL - Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina
  • ARCSA - Association for Rhetoric and Communication in Southern Africa
  • AULLA - Australasian Universities Languages and Literature Association
  • IADA - International Association for Dialogue Analysis
  • IASS - International Association for Scandinavian Studies
  • IAUPE - International Association of University Professors of English
  • ISOLA - International Association for the Oral Literatures of Africa
  • WAMLA - West African Modern Languages Association

and the CIPSH (Conseil International de la Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines), the organisation through which FILLM itself is a member of UNESCO.

The Newsletter will contain information about FILLM and its own activities, but is also intended as a place for CIPSH and FILLM’s member associations to share news about their organisations with a larger and more diverse academic community than they would perhaps normally reach. By being circulated among the member associations alone, the Newsletter has the potential to reach more than 7,000 individual scholars and over 30 international academic organisations.


The
Newsletter will appear four times a year: in March, June, September and December.

Submission of material happens at the initiative of each association and in every volume there will be information about the deadline for submitting material for the following volume.

We hope very much that you will find The FILLM Newsletter informative and useful. If you have any comments (positive or negative!),
please do get in touch!

Adam Borch
FILLM Communications Officer



Circulation

The Newsletter is circulated in email form to FILLM's member associations, CIPSH and scholars who have taken part in FILLM's Congresses and former FILLM committee members. The Newsletter is also available online via FILLM's website.

Should you wish to receive the Newsletter personally via email or do you no longer want to receive it, please do get in touch.

It is free to distribute the Newsletter further. The email version can be circulated on mailing lists and a link to the online version can be posted on websites and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.



Next Volume

The next volume of the FILLM Newsletter will come out on 15 March 2015. If you would like to contribute to the newsletter or have some information for us to include, please send a message to aborch@abo.fi (Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2015).



FILLM News


26th FILLM Congress in Ningbo, China

University of Nottingham Ningbo China
From 17-19 June, the 26th FILLM Congress was held at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. The event gathered scholars from all over the world and there were many excellent papers, including the plenary lectures by Professor Julie Sanders (University of Nottingham), Professor Tope Omoniyi (University of Roehampton) and Professor Hein Willemse (University of Pretoria).

The Congress set out to deal with current issues in languages and literatures. Participants took this as an opportunity to focus more specifically on, for instance, Sino-African relations, the problems of various diasporas and ecological issues in China. For a more detailed discussion of the themes, Yi Chen (University of Toronto) has written an excellent report on the Congress.

Departing FILLM President Roger D. Sell opened the Congress with a Presidential Address. Here Sell outlined the challenges FILLM has faced in recent years and how it has tried to deal with those challenges during his Presidency. You can now read Sell's Presidential Address in full here. Sell has also kindly agreed to make the speech he gave at the Congress Banquet available.

FILLM would like take this opportunity to once again thank Professor Geoff Hall and his team of 
tireless helpers at the University of Nottingham Ningbo for all their hard work. It was a superbly organised event!

If you wish to see a few photos from the Congress, please visit FILLM's website or its Facebook page.


The New FILLM Committee (2014-2017)


The federation also elected its Committee for the next three years at the Congress in Ningbo. The new Committee will be headed by former FILLM Vice-President Meenakshi Bharat (University of Delhi, India). For more details on the new FILLM Committee...

When the new Committee was elected it also meant farewell (at least in terms of official duties) to a number of people who, over several years, have dedicated much of their precious time and energy in the service of the federation. FILLM wishes to thank the following for all their efforts on behalf of the federation:

  • Roger D. Sell (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)
  • Anders Pettersson (University of Umeå, Sweden)
  • Bénèdicte Ledent (Université de Liège, Belgium)
  • John Noyes (University of Toronto, Canada)
  • Roxanna Nubert (Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara, Romania)
  • Henrietta Maria Roos (University of South Africa)
  • Sandra L. Beckett (Brock University, Canada)
  • Brenda Hosington
  • Michael A. Lofaro (University of Tennessee, USA)
  • Roberto Vecchi (Universitá degli Studi di Bologna, Italy)
  • John Stotesbury (University of Eastern Finland)

Upcoming FILLM Congresses

The next FILLM Congress will be held at the University of Delhi, India from 15-17 March 2017. The FILLM Committee will hold its next General Meeting in connection with the Congress on 14 March 2017. Be sure to mark those dates in your calenders!

The site of the 2020 FILLM Congress was also agreed upon in Ningbo. Among the bids to host the conference, the Committee decided on the University of Vienna, Austria. This bid had been submitted by Professor Adams Bodomo, one of FILLM's new Secretary-Generals.

Call for Papers for both events will be issued in due course.


FILLM BlogsFILLM Blogs

In case you haven't noticed yet, the FILLM website now also host a blog. At the moment, we have two regular bloggers: Dr Sebastian Feller and Dr Ilker Yengin (both from the Agency of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore).

Sebastian and Ilker mainly write about interfaces between technology, linguistics and education, especially focusing on different types of interdisciplinarity. The blogs have only begun recently, but Sebastian and Ilkar have already posted some thought-provoking entries. Please go and check them out and let them know your thoughts!

If you would like to maintain a blog on the FILLM website, do get in touch!


FILLM on FacebookFILLM on Facebook

You can also get all the latest FILLM news via our Facebook page. (And if you visit us there, don't forget to 'like' us!)



News from CIPSH and our Member Associations

CIPSHCIPSH (Conseil International de la Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines) held its General Assembly in Paris from 14-15 October 2014. Among other things, CIPSH elected a new board and agreed to organize a Conference on Human Sciences in collaboration with UNESCO in 2017. To read more about the resolutions of the General Assembly...

IASSThe 31st conference of IASS (International Association for Scandinavian Studies) will be held at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) from 9-13 August 2016. The theme is "Transit Norden och Europa". More information will be available in the spring of 2015.



Call for Papers
FILLM Studies Series in Languages and
FILLM is looking for contributions
to its book series FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures. The series is published in collaboration with John Benjamins Publishing Company and former FILLM President Roger D. Sell is the Series Editor.
For more on the aims of the series and how to submit a book proposal...


AULLAConvention on "Literary Networks" in Wollongong, Australia, 7-11 July 2015. The Australasian Universities Languages and Literature Association (AULLA) is one of  three disciplinary associations coming together to organise a convention on Literary Studies at the University of Wollongong next July. The theme for the convention will be "Literary Networks," which covers a very broad range of research intersections with reading and writing. The Call for Papers is now available online...


IADAConference on "Anthropologies of Dialogue" in Nancy, France, 27-29 August 2015. The 15th conference of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA) will take place in Nancy, France next August. The event marks the 25th anniversary of IADA and the theme of the conference is "Anthropologies of Dialogue". The Call for Papers is out. You can download it here or from IADA's homepage. (NB. The deadline for submitting abstracts was 30 November 2014, but if you're quick the organisers might still consider later submissions.)


© 2014 | International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures (FILLM).