IAUPE Past and Present* ^ Top

• The First Conferences
• IAUPE: A Distinctive Conference
• Is IAUPE changing?
• A History of Success
• Meeting the Challenge
• In Closing

* ‘Introduction: IAUPE Past and Present’. In: Innovation and Continuity in English Studies, ed. Herbert Grabes (= University of Bamberg Studies in English Linguistics, gen. ed. Wolfgang Viereck, vol. 44). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main etc., 2001, xi – xix

The International Association of University Professors of English, usually abbreviated to IAUPE, celebrates its Jubilee in the twelve months from the summer of 2000 to the summer of 2001;  but the events which led to its foundation began somewhat earlier than 1951, the year from which its existence is officially dated.  On his way back from the International Congress of Linguists at Paris in 1948, Professor R. W. Zandvoort of the University of Groningen wondered why linguists and others had their international congresses, while anglicists did not.  To remedy this state of affairs, he and the other editors of English Studies, together with certain other European and trans-Atlantic professors of English, wrote to colleagues in British universities asking them to convene an international congress of English studies in a British university town.

In response, those who had signed the letter were invited to the annual conference of British professors of English at Edinburgh at Easter, 1949, to discuss the plan.  Professor Zandvoort and Professor Simonne d'Ardenne of Liège accepted this invitation, and set forth their ideas in detail.  There was initially some reluctance among the British colleagues present to shoulder the burden:  but when Professor C. L. Wrenn declared that he was willing to organise the first meeting at Oxford in 1950, the proposal was agreed.

The First Conferences

» Back

This first conference duly took place at Magdalen College, Oxford, in the last week of August 1950;  and it was apparently a great success, to judge from the recollections of those who were present.  The records show that some 150 professors from all over the world attended, and that there were six sections:  on the teaching of English in the universities, chaired by H. B. Charlton, on linguistic matters (Kemp Malone), on medieval literature (Karl Brunner), on Drama, including Shakespeare (F. P. Wilson), on 16th and 17th century literature (W. L. Renwick), and on 18th and 19th century literature (G. A. Bonnard) -- apparently, so little interest had been expressed in Contemporary Literature that it was omitted!   Three lectures, each scheduled to last 50 minutes, were given in each time slot, and were followed by over an hour of discussion introduced by a distinguished expert in the field.  General meetings of the conference were addressed by Helen Darbishire, who spoke on Wordsworth, and Gilbert Murray, on Europe and the Classical Tradition.  The academic programme was compressed into three very full days, which also included receptions offered by the University and the City of Oxford.  

In the course of, or as a result of, this conference, a number of decisions were taken.  The first was the acceptance of an offer made by Professor A. H. Koszul that the second conference should take place in Paris in August 1953.  The second was that conferences should be scheduled every three years, alternately in an English-speaking and a non-English-speaking country.  The third was that an International Association should be formed, and an International Consultative Committee elected to manage its affairs.  The fourth was that the Association should be affiliated to the newly-founded Fédération internationale des langues et littératures modernes, FILLM.  The fifth was thata Newsletter should be produced;  and this was the forerunner of the Bulletin, whose first issue appeared in 1956.  The sixth, that the lectures given at the first conference should be published;  and in fact they appeared in 1951 as the first issue of English Studies Today.  The seventh, that a Constitution should be drawn up for the Association: and this was formally approved at the first Lausanne conference, in 1959. One of the provisions in this was that the prime mover in the organisation of each triennial conference should be elected President of the Association for the three years culminating in the conference. It will be seen that, in the main, the Association has remained remarkably faithful to the blueprint established for it by its founder members.

The establishment of the Association was presided over by Professor Wrenn;  and with his first report he published a list of 138 members, most of whom held chairs in Europe and North America,  though the Indian sub-continent, Thailand, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, Singapore and Uganda were also represented.  The founder members thus fully reflect the international nature of IAUPE, which today has members from some fifty different countries. 

The planned second conference took place in 1953 as scheduled, though not without some external problems;  for this was the summer of the transport strike in Paris.  At one point it was uncertain whether the conference would go ahead, and quite a number of professors cancelled;  but those who did come seem to have enjoyed themselves, partly perhaps because their Parisian hosts had laid in a stock of champagne which turned out to be more than adequate for those who came.  Due seriousness was restored in 1956, when the Association met at Jesus College, Cambridge, under the aegis of E. M. W. Tillyard:  the official programme contained a note that 'professors are requested to be in College no later than 12 midnight'!

The fourth conference was held in Lausanne in 1959, under the presidency of Georges Bonnard, the then grand patron of English studies at the University.  At the general meeting, the Constitution in its earliest form was approved, and the first Secretary-General and Treasurer, Peter Butter of Glasgow, was elected.  Since 1959, conferences have continued to alternate between the British Isles and Continental Europe, except for those held at UCLA in 1974 and Trent, Ontario, in 1992.  Sometimes there has been a choice of venues, and the business meeting at the preceding conference has had to vote;  sometimes there has been one offer only;  on occasion, the Secretary-General for the time being has had to undertake major research in order to secure a conference venue.  Most happily, all conferences to date have taken place more or less as planned, though there have on occasion been anxious moments:  in 1971, the Istanbul Opera House in which the Eighth Triennial Conference was to meet burnt to the ground only days before the opening, and the Association met instead in the Istanbul Hilton.  A 'baptism of fire', indeed, for the second Secretary-General and Treasurer, John Lawlor, who took over from Peter Butter in that year and, undaunted, graced that office until 1995.

IAUPE: A Distinctive Conference

» Back

IAUPE conferences have much in common with those of other associations, but there are some differences too.  For some time now, presidents have striven to attain the perfect balance between the three desiderata:that there shall be an academic programme which is thoroughly attractive to members both in quality and quantity;  that there shall be time for professors to meet informally to discuss matters of academic and general interest;  and that there shall be an opportunity to learn something of the culture and, yes, attractions of the conference venue.  At the present time we are only too familiar with the short conference on a specific subject which lasts for two or three days, which has a choice of lectures each morning, afternoon, and evening, and which we may easily leave having had only a brief moment during the coffee breaks and rushed meals to speak with colleagues, and having travelled only from the airport to the university and back again.  In comparison, IAUPE conferences may well be either behind the times or ahead of them:  for it is the hope of every president that members will remember the conference both for the excellence of the academic programme and also for the opportunity to do something other than the daily round of academic and administrative duties which are their normal lot. Twenty years ago, when soundings were taken among founder members, this pattern of conference organisation was enthusiastically endorsed;  it is perhaps time to see whether a new generation of professors is of the same mind.

At the business meeting at UCLA in 1974, members chose to accept the offer of Professor Jacek Fisiak that the next conference should be held in Poznan;  but the medievalists among them were equally delighted with the proposal made by Professor P. J. Mroczkowski that they should hold a post-conference meeting in Cracow.  Thus was born the Medieval Symposium, which since 1977 has taken place either after or, more commonly, before the main conference and in a neighbouring university.  It has usually attracted a modest attendance, though the delightful symposium organised by Professor Norman Blake at Sheffield in 1998 looked at one point like being far too 'select' for comfort; and I was commissioned by the Executive Committee to write to all known medievalists a letter whose message might have been summarised in five words, 'use it, or lose it'!  Happily, our medievalists have decided, at least in principle, to use it, and Professor Hans Sauer hopes to welcome a rather larger gathering in Munich.

Certain questions about the Association and its policies have tended to recur in the course of the last half-century.  One of these relates to Article 3 of our Constitution, which regulates admission to membership.  Earlier, the policy was to admit to membership full professors of English in universities of international reputation, and other persons of distinction.  Recently, this has been modified to place more emphasis on the individual as a scholar of distinction, rather than on the institution in which he or she teaches.    It is too early to see what difference this will make to our membership;  but there has already been one very pleasant development, in that several colleagues who have been welcomed into the Association as 'other scholars of distinction' have subsequently been promoted to full professor by their universities.

Another aspect of the membership question, addressed recently by a specially-chosen membership committee, relates to the relative smallness of the representation of certain parts of the world.  For many years the countries with the largest number of members have been the United States and the United Kingdom, which is hardly surprising;  these are followed (in the 1998 statistics) by Germany, then Canada, Japan, France and Switzerland.  The next group consists of Norway, Sweden, Belgium and Spain;  all other countries have fewer than ten members. South America is not represented at all;  Africa, Asia (apart from Japan) and Australasia are thinly represented;  so, in the main, is Eastern Europe.  Members of the International Committee have been diligent in their attempts to improve this situation;  and they hope that all members of the Association will second their endeavours. 

From the first it was anticipated that a publication would be circulated regularly to members;  and since 1956 the IAUPE Bulletin has been sent out two years in three  --  not, that is, in a conference year.  It currently contains reports from correspondents in different parts of the world concerning the study of English, principally in universities, together with information about conferences likely to be of interest to members, such as those of FILLM.  This informatory material has for some time been preceded by one or two articles on subjects considered by the editor to be of general interest to members.  

It also seems to have been expected that conference papers would be published under the aegis of the Association;  but this was never more than irregular.  As mentioned, the first conference was celebrated by the first issue of English Studies Today, and some of the following conferences would also seem to have had their volumes, to judge from the fact that the fifth issue appeared after the eighth conference, at Istanbul in 1971.  The rest, to date, is silence.  However, the International Committee have been considering a proposal that it is time for the Bulletin to be transformed into a yearly learned journal which would more fully reflect the scholarly interests of the Association, while also retaining the traditional content of the Bulletin.  As Andrew Breeze said in his first 'Editorial Notes' in 1999, "IAUPE is changing and so is this Bulletin".

Is IAUPE changing?

» Back

Is IAUPE indeed changing?  And if so, for better or worse?  I suspect that there may be almost as many answers to these questions as there are members (541, at the most recent count). 

To begin with a few statistics:  in the last ten years the membership has remained, numerically, fairly constant;  it has not fallen below 500,  nor has it risen substantially over 600.  Gains have been keeping pace with losses, though it should be added that since the introduction of the database it has become easier to identify 'sleeping' members and alert them to their situation.  More countries are represented in IAUPE now than ever before, though as indicated earlier most countries have only a very few members.  So one of our priorities in the next few years must be to continue to act on the policy which has been to the forefront of discussions ancient and modern, to increase our membership, particularly in parts of the world which remain poorly represented, and particularly among younger professors and other distinguished scholars.

At a recent Business Meeting of FILLM the representatives of the constituent associations of the Federation were invited to present their organisations, referring particularly to their individual strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats currently facing them.  My own presentation in regard to our Association touched largely on issues which have already been mentioned here;  however, some aspects of these reflections may perhaps be worth recording on this occasion. 

One problem shared by many of our fellow-members of FILLM is that of the venue of conferences.  In the past, we have been extremely fortunate in that for every triennial conference there has been at least one member who has been willing to shoulder the organisational burden.  This is clearly the ideal;  for a Professor of English is far better equipped than a professional conference organiser to know what will please his fellow members, and a university venue is likely to be much easier on the purse than one of the conference centres which are springing up all over the world.  However, it is not at all certain that this happy state of affairs will continue well into the 21st century.  Professorial duties, particularly in regard to administration, become more and more onerous, a fact regularly reflected in correspondents' reports in the Bulletin;  and we all know eminent scholars who have refused promotion to chairs for this very reason.  At the time of writing (October 2000) I have one offer for 2004, none for subsequent conferences;  FILLM currently has an offer for 2002, but none for 2005.  The price of conferences is eternal willingness;  whether it will continue to be forthcoming is another matter. 

But there is at least one reason for optimism:  the growing tendency for universities to establish their own conference centre, and the construction of state-of-the-art student accommodation such as that which many of us enjoyed at Durham in 1998.  The policy of alternating between an English-speaking and a non-English-speaking country has meant that the heaviest charge of hospitality has fallen on universities in the British Isles, which have so far hosted seven of our seventeen conferences (Bamberg being the eighteenth).  It is good for your Secretary-General, who may find himself having to try to persuade a doubtful colleague to undertake a task requiring the dedication of much of his spare time for three years, to be able to refer to the excellent on-site infrastructure which some British universities already have.

Another facet of this question relates to the geographical location of conferences.  To date, IAUPE conferences have been held in Europe and North America.  But we are an international association, and we have received, in the last twenty years, firm offers from Australia and Hong Kong.  Why have these not been accepted?  Because, it would appear, there was insufficient evidence that the conference would be well attended.  In the same period, FILLM have held conferences in Africa and Asia. One may wonder whether our younger members will react as their predecessors did, next time there is an offer from outside the traditional regions.

A History of Success

» Back

Up to now, it can I believe be said that, even if some have been less well attended than others, our conferences have been successful if not highly successful, and are remembered with pleasure by all or most of those who attended them.  But it is not necessarily the case that elements which have made for successful conferences in the past will do so in the future.  There are in my view two factors which should give us cause, if not for concern, then at least for reflection.  The first is the proliferation of academic associations, and the consequent proliferation of conferences.  In the last decade alone two new associations have been founded which I have felt it imperative to join;  in the summer of 2000 I participated in three conferences, of which two actively, and I would gladly have attended at least another three if time and money had permitted.  The choice, of course, comes down to personal priorities.  Our members have much more choice than in the past:  and it would be very useful to know why about one-third of our members normally choose to attend IAUPE conferences, while about two-thirds do not.

One of the possible answers to this is suggested by the second factor on which we might reflect.  One of the changes in the field of English Studies is that (and I hope I shall not be misunderstood for putting it in this way!) today's professors tend to know more and more about less and less.  Thirty years ago, the University of Lausanne tripled its English Department chairs because it was seen to be no longer possible for one professor to cover all aspects of English Language and Literature.  Today, it is common in some countries for professors to hold chairs, not of (say) English Language, or English Literature, or Linguistics, or Medieval Studies, but of Semiotics, Victorian Literature, Sociolinguistics, and Chaucer: and a professor of Victorian Literature will not necessarily find it imperative to attend a lecture on Marvell, nor a Chaucerian specialist one on Beowulf, even if given by Seamus Heaney.

Meeting the Challenge

» Back

What is IAUPE doing to meet the challenge of such developments?  In the first place, we have already responded to the substantial increase in the number of colleagues whose principal interest is English linguistics by a noticeable increase in the sections which are expected to interest them.  We are also trying to provide for those whose interests are in the "newer fields".  In the last twenty years we have doubled the number of sections at a conference to cater for the greater degree of specialisation in our midst;  it may well be that we shall have to go further in this direction.  At the same time we have to ensure that the traditional subjects continue to be well represented; and the database is now giving us invaluable information about the academic interests of our members.  We can now help our presidents by listing at least the "top ten" fields of interest (led, currently, by Middle English), so that they may ensure that these are appropriately represented at the conference they organise.

But the academic content is not the only element which determines the success or otherwise of a conference. Twenty years ago, the Bulletin published a survey of the first thirty years of the Association.  Included in it were comments made by the founder members.  These included a reminiscence by Professor Erik Tengstrand (Uppsala) of the academic content of the first conference:

I have now reread the published lectures, and I am again as impressed by their high quality as I was in 1950.  The lectures on the British Dialect Survey were given at a crucial point in the history of that undertaking  --  one might say, in the history of English linguistics.

Not everyone was of the same mind:  witness the opinion of Professor C. Tracy of Acadia, Canada:

The papers, perhaps, have not always been as stimulating  as I should have liked, but the leisurely pace of your conferences and the time given for reflection and discussion are a welcome change from the machine-gun-like  pace of most conferences organized on this continent.  I very much hope that that will continue to be the policy of this association.

If a similar survey were to be carried out among present-day members, it is to be hoped that the former view on academic content would prevail, and the latter on other matters!

Other comments related to particular memorabilia:  the paddle steamer excursion on Lake Geneva during which Professor V. de Sola Pinto recited 'The Prisoner of Chillon', the final banquet of the Edinburgh conference in the Robert Adam library, the reception at the Guinness mansion near Dublin, the salt mine near Cracow which temporarily hosted the medievalists.  However, the most common comment was most memorably expressed by Professor A. R. Humphreys of Leicester:

As I think back, my recollections are rather general than particular -- I mean they concern the rewards of friendly meetings in interesting places and the sense of a very congenial international community it was good to be part of.  I think if I had to select one feature of all which made the conferences  valuable it has been the sense of the approachability, the companionable humanity of the world of the scholars of English.

In Closing

» Back

This seems as good a point as any to end with;  but perhaps I may be permitted a personal note.  Although I am still an 'active' professor, and retirement is still some way away, I have been a member for more than 30 years;  and I still have a vivid recollection of my first conference, that at Dublin.  The initial astonishment which greeted my appearance (I had recently celebrated my 'thirtieth year to heaven') quickly gave way to the warmest of welcomes:  then, as now, the Association was concerned with its attractiveness to younger professors.  I hope that the newer professors among us will have the experience that Professor Humphreys described, and I can confirm.

Lausanne, October 2000. I. J. Kirby, 
Secretary-General.

Source references:
Lawlor, John.  "In a Secretary Hand".  IAUPE Bulletin Summer 1996: 4-7.
Zandvoort, R. W., and Ian J. Kirby. "Thirty Years On".  IAUPE Bulletin Summer 1979: 1-19.
The archives of the Association.