https://aclals.lakeheadu.ca/files/original/aa1468457e746d1e2814bc157b8c2a84.pdf 51a60531d1b26c5df4d16d14b64ea236 PDF Text Text CACLALS REPORT FOR ACLALS 2022 Submitted by Dr. Asma Sayed, President (2019-22), June 2022 CACLALS hosted its annual conference from June 15-18, 2022, virtually at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia. The annual general meeting was held on June 18th. This year’s conference was much smaller compared to last year’s. We received fewer abstracts than we usually do. Yet, we have had approximately 75 registrations, one keynote, one plenary, two roundtables, and 35 presentations. We had some though-provoking, insightful, and inspiring sessions over the four days. Julietta Singh was the keynote speaker. This year, we could have gone back to the Congress, but navigating the Federation’s online portal is somewhat complicated and we could not find a good reason for our members to pay high Congress fees for a virtual conference experience which we were able to offer at a much lower rate. Also, our two key partners, ACCUTE and ILSA were hosting their conferences inperson at different times in different places. We had been in talks with both the associations and were hopeful that some partnership will work out this year as well. Thus, our conference dates also coincided with ILSA’s conference dates, but finally, it proved to be too much work for both the associations to make things work when one association was hosting virtually and another inperson. Thus, we hosted our second independent and virtual conference this year. Having said that, we do recognize the value of hosting our conference alongside other associations and in partnerships with other associations. There is also much to be desired about networking when meeting people in person. Thus, we will be returning to the Congress next year as it will be hosted in-person at York University, and we will hopefully be able to host events in partnership with our partner associations such as ACCUTE and ILSA. During the year, in response to the Federation’s Igniting Change report, we organized a panel to discuss our response to the report and agreed to include an EDID representative position on our executive and to sign the Charter. We have now officially signed the Federation’s EDID Charter. This year, we also completed the steps for changing the name of the association as per our constitution. The discussion about the name change started with Mariam Pirbhai writing a letter to ACLALS executive in 2019 before she stepped off her role as the President of CACLALs. Over the three years since then, we have gone through multiple steps including a name-change panel discussion, a survey, a referendum, and received approval of more than 75% of the membership. As of December 31st, as per our constitutional requirement, we had completed all the steps. No more steps are required. Thus, the Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies is now officially called the Canadian Association for Postcolonial Studies (CAPS). As we have discussed at the conference (and before that as well), we recognize the limitations of this name, but this is what our membership came up with, voted for, ratified, and endorsed. Ultimately, what matters is that we work centring our intentionality and positionality and not let our work be limited by the association’s name. At the very least, we have signalled our moving away from the colonial concept of the Commonwealth. 1 �The next executive will do the work of getting the name changed with the Federation, changing our logo, our name on the bank account and other such practical matters. For over a year now, CACLALS President, Asma Sayed, has represented CACLALS at ACLALS and served on the ACLALS conference committee. She will continue to represent CACLALS during ACLALS as she will be attending in person in Toronto in July. Dr. Sayed mentioned at the AGM 2022 that she was glad to leave CACLALS/CAPS in a strong financial position. She thanked KPU, her institution, for their full support over the past two years. Both years, KPU provided two Zoom accounts and a full-time tech support person for all the days of the conference. Knowing what other associations are paying for these services, this could have easily cost us approximately 3K-5K per year, and thus over the two years, CACLALS managed to save 6K to 10K in technical expenses. This also allowed to keep the conference registration fees extremely low at between 20 and 50 dollars. Some of the expenses were covered through Sayed’s grants through KPU. Sayed reminded that while CACLALS is in a strong financial position, as we return to in-person conference in a city such as Toronto in 2023, and go back to the Congress, next year, our expenses will be high, so we need to be mindful of how we use the funds and work on attracting more funds. Membership thanked Asma Sayed for three years of her leadership as the President of CACLALS, and the members of the executive, for steering the association through some extraordinarily challenging times. A new executive for 2022-24 was elected at the AGM. Executive structure has been changed and new positions have been added to ensure a better sharing of the workload. Jesse Arseneault will serve as the next President post-ACLALS in July 2022. 2 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Canadian ACLALS Report Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Asma Sayed Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 2022