Int'l Congress of Slavists

[Gil Rappaport]

In my intermediate length experience, communication this year with regard to
the Int'l Congress of Slavists has been by far better than ever. I think
that there are three reasons:

a) Michael Flier, chairman of the American Committee of Slavists, has done a
conscientious job of preparing and disseminating clear and TIMELY documents,
soliciting submissions and providing progress reports. Given budgetary and
clerical limitations, it seems that mailings to the 25-30 (?) Ph.D. granting
institutions PLUS publication in the AATSEEL newsletter, is pretty
reasonable. This year was a much more open process of soliciting papers and
providing guidelines than at least I have seen in the past.

b) Several people, including at least George Fowler and Jindra Toman, have
further disseminated Michael's call-for-papers; George spoke for himself; as
I recall he posted Michael's original announcement on SEELANGS (and
elsewhere?); it also appeared in Jindra's newsletter for those working on
formal Slavic linguistics.

c) The very existence and widespread access to the Internet makes secondary
distribution (as in (b)) easy and practical.

Are improvements possible? Of course. My guess is that constructive
suggestions to Michael Flier would be seriously taken into account for the
future. One could imagine a modestly expanded mailing list, perhaps
including non-Ph.D. institutions from which faculty in the past had given
papers. Or, given a Web site next time around (George's idea), the
announcement could be briefer and cheaper to mail (to all M.A. and
Ph.D.-granting institutions, plus some UG colleges?), highlighting deadlines
and the WEB site for further info.

Let's not forget that service to the profession can be very time-consuming
and is not compensated. AND many elements of the process, dictated from
outside, are incredibly Byzantine/Baroque (pick your own cultural pejorative).

As for qualifications, to my mind the Ph.D.-in-hand at some reasonable point
makes a lot of sense, for mostly obvious reasons. The `regular employment'
does not. It smacks of double-jeopardy: if you DON'T have such a position,
whether because of youth or seniority, you are already marginalized in some
sense, and all the more deserve access to extra-institutional professional
activities. It sounds like the rule has not been enforced for retirees, but
might have been for those starting out (true?). The latter deserve a chance
for exposure, in order to compete for a position in the future.

Can we suggest to/petition the ACS that this requirement be removed?

Gil Rappaport
Univ. of Texas at Austin