IGALA ballot for VP & Secretary

Fri Nov 7 15:38:48 UTC 2008

(with apologies for cross-posting)

Dear IGALA members,
With election fever just dying down in the US, I would like to raise it again: 
It is time to elect the new Vice President/President-Elect and Secretary for
IGALA, the International  Gender and Language Association. I am forwarding
this ballot on behalf of the IGALA Secretary (who would usually run the
elections), but Ana Cristina Ostermann has agreed to be a candidate for Vice
President/President-Elect, so I will be taking the votes this year.

Please read this carefully (noting membership requirements), and respond
with your vote (or queries) to ME, not to the GALA-l list or to Ana.

Thanks! 

Vicky 
-------------------------------
Victoria L. Bergvall
President, International Gender & Language Association (IGALA)
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Department of Humanities
Michigan Tech University 
-------------------------------

Dear IGALA members,

Below you will find the ballot for the election of the following positions
on the IGALA Executive Committee: (1) Vice-President/ President-Elect and
(2) Secretary. There are two candidates for Vice-President/President-Elect
and two for Secretary.

Please forward your completed ballot to Victoria Bergvall at
<vbergval at mtu.edu> by December 5, 2008. 
NOTE: Make sure you direct the ballot to VICKY rather than to me or the
entire list. 

Please remember that you must be a paid-up member of IGALA by December 5 in
order for your vote to count. (Note: Membership is extremely good value,
especially because it includes a subscription to the Gender and Language
Journal.) The form for joining IGALA/renewing membership is available at
<http://www.equinoxpub.com/downloads/igalamember.pdf>. 

Thanks, 
Ana Cristina Ostermann, IGALA Secretary

(Descriptions of all candidates and job descriptions follow below.)

(1) Vice-President/President-Elect (select ONE of the two candidates)

______ Ana Cristina Ostermann

______ Ann Weatherall

(2) Secretary (select ONE of the two candidates)

______ Jocelyn Ahlers

______ Mary Talbot

VICE-PRESIDENT / PRESIDENT-ELECT CANDIDATES

Ana Cristina Ostermann
I am a Brazilian scholar who has enthusiastically served as the IGALA
Secretary for the last two years, a position from which I gained large
experience with the organization’s workings and political engagements. As
the IGALA Vice President, I would like to work especially towards: 1)
broadening the scope of the organization to geographical areas not yet fully
reached and 2) bringing the numerous insights gained from the studies of
gender and language to the awareness and benefit of the society at large. My
scholarly work focuses on the interface of language, gender and sexuality
and on the discursive basis of power relations. I am currently working with
data on women’s public healthcare, guided by interactional and observational
approaches (Conversation Analysis, Interactional Sociolinguistics,
Ethnography). My past work and publications include investigations of
discursive practices at an all-female police station and of a feminist
crisis intervention center that deal with female victims of violence in
Brazil, of transgenders, and critical discourse analysis of media aimed at
young females. 

Ann Weatherall

I am an Advisory Council Member. I was on the IGALA5 organising committee.
IGALA6 will be in Japan so it seems timely to have a President-Elect based
in the Asia Pacific Region. I am a mid-career feminist academic who, if
elected, will promote IGALA via my established relationships in a broad
range of political and rofessional organisations. IGALA is a wonderful
community and I would work to support that by encouraging active virtual
communication. For those of you who don't know me, I am a Reader in Social
Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. My research
interests are conversation analysis (CA), discursive psychology and feminist
psychology. My publications include five books and over 40 peer-reviewed
articles and book chapters. One of my first publications reported an
experimental study of the semantic derogation of words for women (1993,
JLSP) and a significant work is a solo-authored book (2002, Gender, language
and discourse). I am currently exploring CA as a feminist language research
tool and would like to use it address gender and language concerns.

SECRETARY CANDIDATES

Jocelyn Ahlers

I am an Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Liberal Studies Department
at California State University - San Marcos (USA). My research interests
include the documentation and revitalization of Native California languages.
This work has led to a consideration of the ways gendered identities play
out in the context of language revitalization; I presented a paper on this
topic at the recent IGALA meeting. I have also been an invited speaker at a
symposium in Wales, where I discussed the role of gender in the development
of a new Border Studies major. My organizational experience at my University
includes leading roles in the development of a Linguistics program, a Border
Studies program, and a proposed California Indian Culture and Sovereignty
Center. I also serve as the Program Director for Cognitive Science, and have
been an active member of numerous committees, ranging from hiring and
curriculum committees to Academic Senate. I look forward to the opportunity
to bring my experience and interests to the position of secretary of IGALA.

Mary Talbot

I received my PhD from Lancaster, was previously a Reader in Language and
Culture at Sunderland, and am currently based at Nottingham Trent
University, UK. I was a Visiting Professor at Sun Yat-Sen University, China,
in 2004. My books include Media Discourse: Representation and Interaction
(2007), Language and Power in the Modern World (with Karen Atkinson and
David Atkinson, 2003), All the World and Her Husband: Women in
Twentieth-Century Consumer Culture (with Maggie Andrews, 2000), Language and
Gender (1998) and Fictions at Work (1995). I am currently working on a 2nd
edition of Language and Gender. Some recent articles deal with sexism and
masculinity in the tabloid press, the stereotype of woman-as-gossip in
advertising and the popular media, and appropriations of feminism in a PR
campaign for the National Rifle Association of America.

Job Descriptions

1. Vice-President (President-elect)

The Vice-President is responsible for

•   supporting the President as appropriate (see President’s duties at
www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/organisations/igala/minutes/2007/Item2Jobdescriptions.doc)
•   assuming the duties of the President in the event the President cannot
serve, and succeeding to the office of President at the expiration of the
term as President-elect
•   monitoring the IGALA site, identifying new links, documents and
information to be posted on it, and liaising with the Webweaver about this
(together with the President and Secretary)
•   chairing the Nominations Committee for Advisory and Executive IGALA
committee members
•   running the IGALA (Post)graduate Student Essay Competition (including
chairing the committee, one member of whom will be the Graduate Student
Representative)
-- The Vice-President is also strongly encouraged to attend the IGALA
International conferences.

2. Secretary

The Secretary is responsible for

•   gathering agenda items for meetings
•   producing and distributing agendas
•   keeping Minutes of IGALA Executive and Open meetings
•   maintaining records of meetings and decisions
•   producing and distributing/posting Minutes of the meetings to the IGALA
Membership
•   in conjunction with the Vice President/President-elect, organising
elections and distributing/posting results to the IGALA membership
•   monitoring the IGALA site, identifying new links, documents and
information to be posted on it, and liaising with the Webweaver about this
(together with the President and President-elect)
-- The Secretary is also strongly encouraged to attend the IGALA
International conferences.

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