location of conference

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Prof. Walter Comins-Richmond wrote:

>Is it "provincial" to request fairness? Toronto, San Diego, Chicago,
>Wahsington DC, Toronto. Four out of five years the conference chooses a
>"venue" that discommodes scholars on the West Coast. Long air travel,
>time zone changes, climate changes--I'm not implying that it's a bad
>thing to have the conference twice in four years in the same place
>(Canada or elsewhere), I'm saying outright.

The question of fairness is all in how you count and how you look at the
conference schedule.  Yes, four out of five years the conference is not on
the west coast according to the calculation above.  But in 1998 we'll be in
San Francisco, so that would mean that four out of six years the conference
is not on the west coast.  That would mean that the conference is on the
west coast about 33% of the time from 1993-1998.  Apparently, according to
other messages sent to this list, MLA is not able to meet in Boston or New
York because there are not enough hotels (Boston) or the hotels are more
interested in tourist trade than conventions between 12/27 and 12/30.  This
reduces the number of options in the populous Boston-Washington corridor  to
Washington.  I recall someone saying at some point that approximately 50% of
the AATSEEL membership lives and works in that corridor, but have no way of
knowing if that was or is true.  I haven't heard anything about meeting in
Philadelphia or Baltimore and assume that these cities also don't have
enough hotels to accomodate the MLA.  Perhaps it is the east coast (which
can host meetings only in Washington, DC)  that is, in fact, inconvenienced
more than the midwest (with meetings possible in both Toronto and Chicago)
and more than  the west coast (with meetings possible in both  San Diego and
San Francisco).   It is all a matter of how one looks at the question.

That being said, I recognize that colleagues from the west coast are
certainly more inconvenienced in travelling to Toronto than colleagues from
the midwest and northeast.  Perhaps most inconvenienced are those of our
colleagues who cannot go to Toronto at all due to immigration-related
restrictions on their travel into and out of the US.

The bottom line is that as long as our association is linked with MLA we
have no control over the location of our conferences.  To the best of my
knowledge, the MLA has not yet made public the location of the conference
for 1999.

Ben Rifkin

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Benjamin Rifkin
Associate Professor of Russian
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall
1220 Linden Dr.
Madison, WI  53706
voice:  608/262-1623
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