Meeting Minutes

Of the General Meeting of IAUPE held on Friday, 10 August 2007, in the Palaestra Building of the University of Lund, Sweden at 2 p.m.

The President of the Association, Professor Marianne Thormählen, opened the meeting in the presence of 72 members. A minute's silence was observed in memory of those members who had died since the 2004 Conference.

  1. Minutes of the previous meeting

    The minutes of the meeting held in Vancouver (2004) were received and adopted.

  2. Matters Arising

    Since the 2004 meeting in Vancouver, Professor Michael Lofaro had been elected to the committee of FILLM, of which IAUPE is a constituent member, and he and the Secretary-General had attended the business meeting of that body in January 2007. The next FILLM conference would be held in Lyon, France, in July 2008.

    Other matters are treated elsewhere in these minutes.

  3. Secretary General's Report

    The report was received and approved.

  4. Treasurer's Report and Triennial Statement

    The report and statement were received and adopted. The healthy state of the Association's finances was noted, and the proposal that there should be no increase in annual dues was endorsed.

  5. International Committee Business:

    1. Minutes of the International Committee Meeting, 5 August 2007

      The minutes of this Meeting were received.

    2. International Committee membership

      The composition of the IC in the period 2004-2007 was noted.

    3. Elections for the Period 2007 2013

      Seven proposals had been received, and in accordance with the result of the postal ballot of all members of the Association the following professors had been elected to the IC for this period:

      • Professor D. Birch (England)
      • Professor J. S. Brooker (USA)
      • Professor H. Kardela (Poland)
      • Professor M. Kytö (Sweden)
      • Professor M. Lofaro (USA)
      • Professor I. Taavitsainen (Finland)

      The President expressed the gratitude of the Association to retiring members, including Professor Rehder, chairman of the IC, and Professor Stanwood, past president. This was endorsed with acclamation by the General Meeting.

    4. Secretary-General and Treasurer

      It was noted that Professor Kirby had expressed his willingness to serve for a third six-year term of office, and that this had been endorsed by the IC. It was also noted that the IC had proposed the creation of the position of Deputy Secretary-General and Treasurer.

    5. Publications

      Since the Vancouver meeting, The Wider Scope of English, edited by Professors Herbert Grabes and Wolfgang Viereck and containing papers from the Bamberg conference (2001), had been published and distributed to all members.

      The Secretary-General has a certain number of copies of this volume remaining. The IC approved his suggestion that members who might wish to have further copies can obtain them from him at cost.

      Another publication, Beowulf and Beyond, which contains papers given at the medieval symposia at Munich (2001) and Vancouver (2004), has also appeared. Copies may be ordered from the publisher, Peter Lang.

      A volume of papers given at Lund is to be edited by Professor Thormählen, and a further volume by Professors Rehder and Nünning. It was anticipated that these volumes would appear in 2008 and 2009-10 respectively.

      The International Committee has decided that in principle two volumes should be published between conferences and distributed to members. In accordance with earlier decisions, material of a more general kind, including country reports, would be published on the website.

    6. Website

      The new website (www.iaupe.net), under the technical direction of Professor Ray Siemens, Victoria BC, has replaced the earlier ones. The IC has set up a committee to consider further developments.

  6. Venue 2010

    A presentation was made by Professor Peter Vassallo (Malta), whose offer was the only firm one to have been received. After questions, a vote was taken and Malta was overwhelmingly accepted as the venue for the IAUPE conference in 2010. Professor Vassallo was elected President of the Association for the period 2007-10.

    To enable the greatest number of members to attend, it was considered that this and subsequent conferences should be held as close as possible to the last week of July.

Other business

Several members expressed their gratitude to the President for the immense amount of work and time she had devoted to the organisation of what had been an outstandingly successful conference. Their comments were approved with acclamation by the meeting. In reply, Professor Thormählen paid tribute to the participation of her family throughout the preparation of the conference, to colleagues who had also been omnipresent during the conference week and in the preceding medieval symposium, and also to the past President, Professor Stanwood, and the Secretary-General, both of whom had been most supportive throughout.

The President, Professor Thormählen, declared the meeting closed at 3.15 p.m.