FINSSE, the Finnish Society for the Study of English, was founded in 1998 “to advance university-level research and teaching in Finland of the English language, literatures in English and cultures of English-speaking peoples”. Biennially, a FINSSE conference is organised “to bring together university teachers, scholars and advanced students from all fields of English studies.” This year’s conference was held in Helsinki 13‒14 June, with the theme “Sustainability in English Studies”.
When I read the Call for Papers in February, I was very happy to see that the theme of this year’s conference would be sustainability. The CFP started by defining sustainability as comprising environmental, social and economic sustainability and asking what it has to do with language and literature. The role of language was seen as a tool through which the viability of communities is sustained and sustainability goals are negotiated, and literature as one through which alternative and more sustainable worlds can be explored. Also, the question of ensuring that research practices in English studies are sustainable was addressed. In addition to the general introduction to the theme, there were topic suggestions related to for example language resources, language policy, ELF, language teaching, translation, equality, identity, health, ecolinguistics, environmental humanities and several approaches to literature.
Besides being excited about the theme in general, I was curious to see how it would be approached in the presentations; which perspectives of sustainability would be discussed, and maybe most importantly, who would be considered being part of the group that the sustaining is done for—humans only, or sentient beings in general. Typically, the current (mainstream) definitions of sustainability exclude sentient beings other than humans as having moral value, but there has been an increasing call for defining sustainability as including non-human animals as ends in themselves. However, there was no mention of them in the CFP, and the United Nations’ Sustainability Development Goals, which were mentioned briefly in the CFP, are extremely anthropocentric. In the SDGs, non-human animals are treated as either resources for human consumption or, at the species level, as worth conserving in order to keep providing humans with ecosystem services.
In total, the conference program included one plenary presentation, 30 individual presentations, four poster presentations and a panel discussion during the two conference days. In addition, a meeting for doctoral students was arranged the day before the actual conference. I attended 13 presentations and the panel discussion. Using the abstracts as my guide, I aimed to see all those presentations that in one way or the other were connected to sustainability. When there were no such options available, I made my choice based on other reasons, such as my personal interests or the expected relevance to my own research.
I found all the presentations I heard interesting and having scientific, social or practical significance, and the panel discussion on the future of English studies teaching was excellent—both content- and entertainment-wise. Sustainability itself, however, was discussed relatively rarely—and sometimes the term seemed to be used more as a buzzword than in connection with the actual concept—but there were some thought-provoking exceptions. Those presentations were related to the sustainability of language resources; connections between the global environmental crisis and trains in literature and film; researchers’ more sustainable travelling practices; the consequences and possibilities of Caribbean romance literature for environmental and cultural sustainability; and the cost of sustainability in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam. All in all, while there were several interesting connections made to sustainability, the question of non-human animals mentioned above was left to be addressed.
After the conference, I would say that FINSSE-11 was definitely worth attending. The atmosphere was very warm and welcoming, and the program was varied. The next FINSSE conference will be organised in two years, and I warmly encourage everybody working in the field of English studies at any English department in Finland to participate. And if you are not yet a member of FINSSE, or just want to know more about the society, click here!
Anna Runsio
The author is a doctoral researcher at the Department of English, University of Turku. Her doctoral dissertation deals with the linguistic representation of research animals’ agency in historical materials. She is particularly interested in combining linguistics with historical critical animal studies, i.e. using linguistic methods for investigating the exploitation of non-human animals in the past and its consequences today.