FYI I have forwarded to the US WIG list.
That's the only North American list for German Studies I know of -- tho I'd be interested to hear if others know of more.
Best wishes,
Sarah

Sarah Colvin
Professor in the Study of Contemporary Germany and Director, Institute for German Studies
University of Birmingham
Muirhead Tower
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
Tel: ++44 121 4158627



________________________________
From: WIGS-FORUM [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Henrike Laehnemann [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 28 March 2011 09:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: Help Shape the Future

Dear colleagues,
Pam Moores tries to gather information on subject associations for the University Council of Modern Languages (UCML<http://www.ucml.org.uk/>) to make us all more visible.
Could I ask your help in two respects:

a)      Send me amendments for the short blurb on WIGS I am going to write (below as comparator what WIF provided and the start of my article, based mainly on the info on our website – I would be especially grateful for some lively account of the early history of WIGS!)

b)      Forward this to German associations you might be aware of, including Canada and the USA, asking them to feed back directly to Elizabeth Andersen (copied in)?
Thanks a lot for your help!
Henrike
Prof. Henrike Lähnemann
President Women in German Studies (WIGS<http://wigs.ac.uk/>)
Newcastle University, GB - NE1 7RU Newcastle upon Tyne
Room: OLB 6.23, Tel.: 0044 191 2227513, [log in to unmask]
WIGS (Women in German Studies)
WIGS was established in 1988 with the aim of bringing together female Germanists in Great Britain and Ireland and supporting them in all aspects of their professional life. Membership is open to any woman who is currently teaching, studying, or working in any area of German Studies, or who has done so in the past. A newsletter and membership list is issued early in the summer to all members. The main event organised by WIGS is the annual conference, which takes place at a different institution each year in November (in 2011 in Leeds). This is an interdisciplinary, one-day event combining academic papers, a business meeting, and exchange of information. In 1993 it was decided to hold also regularly larger conferences, open also to non-members, the first on the subject of 'Women and the Wende' (Nottingham). Following its success, four more open conferences have since been held. In 2010, a shared conference with WISPS in Swansea confirmed the importance of cooperation across the modern languages associations.
As comparator: What WIF (Women in French) wrote
The establishment of a Women in French network in 1987 resulted from the shared recognition of the absence of women’s voices within French Studies. An initial audit confirmed the anecdotal perception that whilst a majority of undergraduates studying French were women, female  numbers dwindled at postgraduate level and reduced still further as one ascended the hierarchy of academic  posts. Degree curricula and research agendas also displayed (as in other disciplines), a largely male-for-universal vision of French history, culture, politics and language. The first WIF one-day conference took place in December 1987 in the University of London Union. A series of one-day and conference-fringe meetings followed, combining academic papers on women-related topics with practical sessions (on, for example, assertiveness techniques), before the first WIF weekend conference held in Ilkley in November 1990. This then became a regular, normally biennial event, and an increasingly international one: each unified by an interdisciplinary  theme, the conferences - the eleventh of which will take place in Leeds in May 2011 – have  led to a series of edited books. A spin-off literary studies group Women Reading Women was rapidly established in 1988, and led then to the setting up of Gill Rye’s highly successful Contemporary Women’s Writing in French network. WIF members north of the border set up Women in French in Scotland (WIFIS) around 2001: WIFIS also hosts an annual interdisciplinary one-day conference. The WIF network had had considerable impact on the place of women in French Studies UK, both as a profession and as a disciplinary field. Always thoroughly inter-generational, its conferences offer a supportive environment for postgraduates and early-career academics. The dearth of women in academic departments and managerial structures has shifted considerably for the better, and Women in French has been one significant element in the multiply determined development of French Studies into a richly inter- and multi-disciplinary subject field in which women are no longer the silent ‘other’.

From: Elizabeth A. Andersen
Sent: 27 March 2011 18:26

Please see Pam Moores’ e-mail below. Could you please provide text about WIGS and could you also send out a message via your distribution lists which asks for further information about relevant German Studies associations, including Canada and the USA. Direct colleagues to respond to me and I’ll format any contributions additional to AGS and WIGS.
____________________________
Dr Elizabeth A Andersen
German UCML representative
Newcastle University
From: Moores, PM [mailto:[log in to unmask]]

In recent meetings and workshops we have focused attention both on the Shaping the Future project and on the review of UCML organisation to enable us to work more effectively across our broad and diverse academic community in order to voice a powerful shared message. Jim has just done so very effectively in his response to the BIS Inquiry into the Future of Higher Education. One of the recurrent themes of our Exec meetings has been the need for all Exec members to take our messages and questions out to your respective constituencies and to bring back issues and views from your subject areas. So I am sure that what I am about to ask for all of you to contribute over the next 2 to 3 weeks should be relatively straightforward for some, but a little more complicated for others according to the precise nature of your constituency.

We are working at the moment on materials to be posted on a Shaping the Future section of the UCML website (under development and needing to be completed by end April – with adaptation to template, editing and proof-reading time built in). As you may know, the idea is to provide a tool-kit and case studies. The three main sections of the website are Identity, Internationalisation and Employability. Under the heading of Identity, a key theme (central to the initial project proposal and our response to the Worton Review) is
 Shared Identity and Common Purpose: Unity embracing Diversity. One sub-section here, which I hope will be useful to the entire UCML community, needs to be:
A Mosaic of Subject Associations: Unity embracing Diversity.
(Comments on document title welcome.)

We can provide a useful tool for our colleagues and a statement of our wide-ranging academic interests through documentation setting out the full range of subject associations in our fields. I attach a model in the form of a document on French Subject Associations produced by Lucille Cairns in conjunction with colleagues from across the French academic community.(Many thanks to Lucille!) French seemed a good place to start, and obviously the picture will be more or less complex, the document longer or shorter according to the area you represent. That is not a problem. This seems a good format however. Please could each of you produce an equivalent document for your constituency e.g. Italian Subject Associations, Area Studies Subject Associations etc. The individual files will figure beneath an introductory document from me on the role of the subject associations. I will be very happy to receive input from you as regards what you would like to see in this introductory document too.
Let the exchanges begin! I am keen to engage in dialogue wherever there are questions. I know that Lucille operated by sending out a request for contributions on an electronic list Francofil. If you do not already have the necessary information to hand, this is probably the most rapid and effective way to proceed in your subject areas.
I look forward to hearing from you. Please put ‘Help shape the future’ in the subject line to help me keep on top of this. I am also writing to some of you individually so that we can liaise about contacts in some of the more complex areas. Please pass this message on to colleagues in other language communities that we should be representing and ask them to contact me. We want to be wide-reaching and inclusive with a view to bringing in more members and voices.
Many thanks for your help
Pam