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ESSE
publications
A Survey of English Studies in
Europe at the Turn of the Century
compiled
by Martin A. Kayman with the assistance of Filomena Mesquita
The Survey, which
was originally published in
volume 14.1 of The
Messenger (Spring 2005) can now be downloaded
in pdf format. This is its introduction:
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Introduction
This project was inspired by a sense that discussions
of ‘English
studies in Europe’ were bedevilled by a tendency to assume that what
others do under the title of ‘English’, ‘Anglo-American Studies’ or the
like was, broadly speaking, similar to what we ourselves do. Even when
one registered the fact that things were inevitably different in some
respects, it was rarely the most important ones, since these were
precisely our ‘natural’ or ‘common sense’ ways of doing things, the
unexamined cultural assumptions that it is so difficult to make
visible. Take, for example, the language of instruction. In a large
number of countries, colleagues find it hard to understand how it is
possible to teach ‘English’ in a language other than English: it is
obvious that is what you do. Yet elsewhere, it is felt to be equally
natural to teach in the students’ own language.
Through the 1990s, as
people became increasingly exposed to activities in other countries,
either in the context of the European Society for the Study of English,
Socrates-Erasmus exchanges, or the British Council’s Oxford Conference
or Literature Symposium, awareness necessarily grew of the existence of
considerable differences in the way English was configured, taught and
studied across Europe. But what precisely were those differences? How
substantial were they? Were they merely local ‘translations’ of a
‘common core’ of studying English, or effectively incommensurable
constructions of the discipline?
The seeds for a project aimed at
providing some answers grew from a panel discussion on the topic led by
myself and Tom Healy at the ESSE conference held in Debrecen in 1997.
ESSE and the British Council agreed to support a survey aimed at
establishing reliable information about the variety of meanings
‘English’ has in the context of Higher Education in Europe. Such
information became more important with the announcement of the Bologna
agreement in 1999.
The original aim was to produce both a report and a
database providing a snap-shot of arrangements for teaching and
studying English in Europe immediately
before Bologna began to be implemented. At its most ambitious, the
survey would serve as a basis for monitoring the impact of the
agreement on the shape of English Studies in Europe through subsequent
five-year surveys.
As the reader will see below, the
project did not achieve all its, eventually over-ambitious, goals.
There were various reasons; whilst some are, in a sense,
accidental—determined by the precarious circumstances in which the
project developed—others, I would argue, have more significance for our
understanding of the variety within the discipline in different
educational contexts precisely because they bring us up against the
(in)visibility of some of the most substantial differences.
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| The European History of English
Studies: Contributions towards the History of a Discipline
Ed. by Balz Engler and
Renate Haas.
Leicester: The English Association, for ESSE, 2000
More information avaible
on the EHES project.
This is the Table of Contents of the volume:
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Preface, i-ii
Introduction
Writing the European History of English Studies - Balz Engler,
1-12
National Surveys
Southern Europe
A Very Old Alliance? An Introduction to English in Portugal -
Martin Kayman, 13-32
Notes for a History of English Studies in Spain - Toms
Monterrey, 33-52
'English' in Italy: a Problematic fortuna - Franco Marenco,
53-68
Western Europe
English Studies in France - Imelda Bonel-Elliott, 69-88
English Studies: The Dutch Experience - Pieter Loonen,
89-101
Northern Europe
Some Aspects of the History of English Studies in Norway -
Arthur O. Sandved, 103-121
The History of English Studies in Denmark - Jorgen Erik
Nielsen, 123-141
Central Europe
English University Studies in Austria: an In(n)sider's Report
- Manfred
Markus, 143-160
Masters and Teachers: English Studies in Poland - Krystyna
Kujawinska-Courtney, 161-181
The History and the Present State of English Studies in the
Czech Republic - Josef Hladky, 183-189
The History and the Present State of English Studies in
Slovakia - Jozef Olexa, 191-200
English Studies in Slovenia - Meta Grosman, 201-213
South-Eastern Europe
Seventy Years of English Studies in Serbia (1929-1999), a
Brief Survey
- Radmila B. Sevic, 215-230
The History of English Studies in Romania - Eugenia Gavriliu,
Horia Hulban, Ecaterina Popa, 231-265
English Studies in Bulgaria - Alexander Shurbanov, Christo
Stamenov, 267-292
European Case Studies
1848 and German English Studies/German Philology - Renate
Haas, 293-311
Vil*m Fried: English Studies in Migration - Helmut Schrey,
313-322
The Birth and Growth of ESSE: Some Personal Recollections -
Hans-Jürgen Diller, 323-334
European Perspectives
Englishness and English Studies - Balz Engler, 335-348
European Survey: Parameters and Patterns of Development -
Renate Haas, 349-371
Contributors, 373-379
Index, 381-388
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The Messenger
has initiated the publication of supplements to its regular
newsletter:
- the report from the Berlin meeting
on Resources
for Scholarship in Eastern Europe (1999), which is available in pdf format. This is the
introduction to the Report:
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Introduction
The following
reports were prepared for a conference held at the
Humboldt University in Berlin in September, 1998. There more than a
dozen Eastern European scholars presented summaries of the state of
resources available in their respective countries. The reports are much
more varied than was expected, but a few focal points are clear:
inadequate libraries, inadequate office equipment and space, and
salaries, often as not, insufficient to support a minimal household,
let alone allow the purchase of foreign books or periodicals. In some
countries the situation has deteriorated further: at the time of
writing, the university teachers in Romania are being warned that their
salaries cannot be paid out from September on.
For the reader in
the
West some of these reports may seem strangely uninformative, here and
there downright innocent: few scholars say outright how pitiful their
monthly salaries are: few of them mention that they lack the resources
taken for granted in the West, such as getting the postage and fax
costs of professional correspondence paid for by the university, not to
speak of telephone calls. Recently a German colleague complained that
he had offered a run of a scholarly journal to Eastern libraries,
generously suggesting that all they had to do was pay the packing and
postage. He complained that his offer was not even honoured by a reply.
One of the aims of this publication is to point out that the individual
scholar would have to take over these costs, and that this might amount
to more than that scholar earns in a month. The reader in the West may
be unaware that air mail postage might well cost the equivalent of a
loaf of bread. The salary differential in some cases approaches a ratio
of a hundred to one!
In other words, we
need to read between the lines
of these reports, adding information the significance of which their
compilers could not know. Many a scholar in
the West is notyet aware that some of
the paperbacks he has relegated to the rubbish bin in the West would be
precious commodities for teachers as well as students in another part
of Europe. It is significant that the ESSE journal EJES (European
Journal of English Studies) has not been seen by most of the
scholars
who represent their national societies on the ESSE Board: the
subscription rates are prohibitive. It is also important to know that
books sent to libraries occasionally land on the black market, or will
not be catalogued for two years, whereas a book sent to a teacher can
be lent out to students immediately, and is more likely to be returned
and lent out again.
It was not the
primary aim of the Berlin conference
to find immediate solutions to the problems of resourcing for
scholarship. But our discussions made clear that face-to-face contacts
are of the essence. For instance, many a scholar in France or Germany
has books to dispose of, but does not know where to send them. Personal
contacts also make the exchange of scholarly journals possible. Stacks
of them gather dust in the West, whereas many libraries in the East
receive no scholarly journal published in the West except for The
Messenger. Face-to-face contacts also make possible a
departmental
exchange of journals (in the East often as not to be had for the cost
of the postage stamp) and can thread the needle
of joint East-East as well as East-West
research projects, which are in our discipline as yet as good as
unknown.
What the
ESSE-furnished contacts have thus far failed to bring
about is an exchange of ideas about human rather than material
resources. In the East the number of contact hours with students tends
to be very high: whereas a student in the West may have 10 to 15 hours
in a class or seminar each week, the number is often double that in the
East. This difference not only reflects fundamental differences in the
concept of higher education, but also means a strain on human resources
which could be relieved. The national reports in the following pages,
in other words, are only part of the story: what we need to follow up
are not only the complaints and suggestions touched on, but also the
blank spaces which increased contact has begun to reveal.
Helmut Bonheim
July, 1999
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- Jan Rusiecki's report on Postgraduate
Studies in
Europe (2000), which is similarly available in pdf format. This is the introduction to the
Report:
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This paper presents
an outline survey of the structure of postgraduate study of English in
selected countries of Europe. One must be aware from the start,
however, that the term 'postgraduate studies' varies from country to
country. In many countries the undergraduate programme ends with the BA
degree (or equivalent), so that postgraduate study begins with the MA
programme. On the other hand, there are countries, like Germany, where
there is no BA degree, only a uniform undergraduate course leading
directly to the MA (or a degree more or less equivalent to the
MA). In certain other countries, such as Poland, some universities have
begun to award BA degrees, while others follow the German model. On the
other hand, in France even the basic undergraduate course, the
equivalent of the BA course elsewhere, is in two parts.
The survey
necessarily begins, then, with a brief sketch of undergraduate
programmes in nine countries, referring the reader to section 2 (on the
MA degree) where necessary. We shall begin with England (and Wales),
and Denmark - the countries which have a two-tier BA + MA system - and
then pass on to France, which has a system of its own. Finally we shall
have a look at Germany and the countries which follow - or, until
recently, used to follow - the German model: Portugal, Spain, Poland,
Hungary, and Russia.
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