minutes and report of first meeting

[Trechter, Sara]

Summary of Stanford Conference and Minutes for General IGALA meeting
(Stanford University, May 5-7, 2000)

The first annual IGALA (International Gender and Language Association
Conference) met May 5-7, 2000 at Stanford University.  Plenary speakers were
Sally McConnell-Ginet, Don Kulick, and Mary Bucholtz.  A panel on "The
Future of Queer Linguistics" (Don Kulick, Rusty Barrett, Robin Queen, Anna
Livia, Bill Leap was unable to attend due to an illness) was presented
Friday night.

The conference was well-attended including papers from a broad spectrum,
especially including international and queer perspectives.  IGALA would
especially like to thank Penny Eckert and all of the Stanford graduate
student organizer for organizing and running the conference in an expert
fashion.

The first open business meeting was held on May 7 with President Penny
Eckert presiding.  Vicky Bergvall (financial officer), Sara Trechter
(secretary), and several members of the advisory council were present-Mary
Bucholtz, Kira Hall, Anna Livia, Bonnie McElhinny. Sally McConnell-Ginet
(president-elect), and advisory council members Ingrid Piller, and Yukako
Sunaoshi were unable to attend.

1.	Next conference. Penny Eckert asked participants/members to consider
organizing and hosting the next IGALA conference at their institution.
Interested members should contact Penny Eckert (contact information for all
governing board members is below).

2.	Travel fund. Eckert asked that the organization create a travel fund
for international presenters from developing countries to support a
continued international and broader-than-English approach to gender and
language.

3.	Journal and website. Eckert announced that IGALA was working on
creating a journal for the field and initiating a website for the
organization.  For now, participants may link to the Stanford website for
information about the first IGALA conference, and to Mary Bucholtz's website
(http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/bucholtz/lng/)  for links to language
and gender resources and people.

4.	Advisory Council appointments. Before open discussion, Eckert
requested that members think of volunteering themselves as possible
appointees to the Advisory Council.  All appointments are three-year terms,
with the exception of the student slot, which is a two-year term. The 6
positions that will be appointed are: 1)  student representative, 2)
outside-of-academia representative 3) representative for language and
sexuality/queer research, 4) language minority research, 5) feminist
research, and 6) representative from a country other than the US, UK,
Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

5.	Discussion: proceedings, syllabi, COSWL. Open discussion began with
the website and possible links.  Proceedings for the conference were
discussed.  IGALA as a whole will not be responsible for proceedings because
of the detailed infrastructure this would require, but each host institution
will be responsible for producing proceedings in the manner that they see
fit.  On-line proceedings as a possibility was also discussed.  Next Scott
Kiesling announced the update of the on-line gender and language syllabi
collection that is being updated by the  Committee on the Status of Women in
Linguistics (a committee of the LSA).  Send your syllabus to
kiesling at ling.ohio-state.edu <mailto:kiesling at ling.ohio-state.edu>
Creating working links between  IGALA and other organizations such as COSWL
was mentioned, perhaps in the form of a symposium at linguistics
conferences.  The Linguistic Society of America summer institutes (next
possibility is Michigan State in 2003) was also mentioned as a possible
venue for conferences.

Meeting was adjourned for a late dinner.

Minutes of first Executive and Advisory Council Meeting.
Executive Council present: President Penny Eckert, President-elect Sally
McConnell-Ginet, Financial officer Vicky Bergvall, Secretary Sara Trechter
Advisory Council present:  Mary Bucholtz, Kira Hall, Anna Livia, Bonnie
McElhinny

Several topics were discussed:

Proceedings:  Stanford will publish a lightly edited proceedings through
CSLI.  Conference organizers (2 per session) took notes and rated papers in
order to determine which papers to invite for proceedings. Eckert envisioned
a possibility of two volumes coming out of current conferences, possibly one
on queer language and one on border work.  Past proceedings from the
Berkeley Women and Language Conferences are still at Berkeley and need to be
moved.  IGALA must contact Suzanne Wertheim soon since the date for moving
these out was December 1999.  The Berkeley Women and Language Group has
$2500 from past proceedings to contribute toward the cost of moving.
Perhaps a big sale of past proceedings is in order. Each institution who
hosts the conference will decide for itself whether to produce proceedings,
as we cannot handle this as an organization.

Journal:  A subcommittee (Mary Bucholtz, Penny Eckert, Anna Livia) was
formed to meet with Jane Sunderland and Sara Mills, who have taken over
editorship of Gender, Language, and Sexism, a journal of the International
Applied Linguistics Association. The subcommittee met with them to discuss
combining this project with IGALA's planned journal. Following a productive
meeting, inquiries into the possibility of a journal are continuing.

Dues:  No amount was decided on.  It was suggested that dues should contain
the journal's subscription price, as a way to support the journal. It was
also proposed that they contain an optional contribution to a travel fund
for international scholars with limited funds to come to the meeting.
McElhinny suggested the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
for such support.

Future Conferences:  Although the initial proposal was that conferences be
held every year, some board members felt that this was unrealistic.

Appointing the rest of the Advisory Council: It was decided that this should
take place as soon as possible.

Respectfully submitted, Sara Trechter


IGALA contact information

President, Penny Eckert, eckert at csli.stanford.edu
Vice-President/President-Elect, Sally McConnell-Ginet, smg9 at cornell.edu
Secretary, Sara Trechter, strechter at csuchico.edu
Financial Officer, Vicky Bergvall, vbergval at mtu.edu
Advisory Council (6 more seats to be appointed)

Mary Bucholtz, bucholtz at tamu.edu
Kira Hall, kira.hall at yale.edu
Anna Livia, livia at sirius.com
Bonnie McElhinny, bonnie.mcelhinny at utoronto.ca
Ingrid Piller, piller at uni-hamburg.de
Yukako Sunaoshi, y.sunaoshi at auckland.ac.nz

*******************************************************
Dr. Sara Trechter
Asst. Professor, Linguistics and English
CSU,  Chico, CA 95929-0830
(530) 898-5447 (office)
(530) 898-5540 (fax)