AAA 2008: SLA Call for Papers

Tue Feb 12 21:20:42 UTC 2008

(please feel free to forward this email to potentially interested  
parties; apologies for cross-postings)

Dear Linguistic Anthropologists,

It's that time of year again:  The Society of Linguistic Anthropology  
(SLA) invites your submissions for the American Anthropological  
Association's (AAA) 107th Annual Meeting, to be held in San  
Francisco, CA, on November 19-23, 2008.  As this year's SLA Section  
Program Editor, I am writing to encourage you to submit invited  
sessions, volunteered sessions, and volunteered papers and posters so  
that we can have an exciting meeting in San Francisco this November.   
The theme of the 2008 Meeting is "Inclusion, Collaboration, and  
Engagement."  I also hope that you will consider orienting your  
panels to the conference theme, although you do not have to do so.

There are two deadlines for submission:  (1) an internal SLA deadline  
for invited sessions (Monday, March 3), and (2) the AAA deadline for  
volunteered sessions and volunteered papers/posters (5pm, Eastern  
Time, April 1, 2008).  While you must submit your materials to the  
AAA website for both of these submission processes before the stated  
deadlines, invited session submissions must also be sent by the March  
3rd deadline directly to the SLA Program Section Editor  
(kira.hall at colorado.edu).  Your email to me should include a copy of  
your session abstract as well as individual paper abstracts from each  
of your proposed participants.  I will then send these out to the 6- 
member SLA Program Committee for review.  (Note: Invited session  
submissions to the AAA website by March 3 can still be somewhat  
preliminary;  you can make changes on your submission up until the  
general deadline on April 1.)

The word limit for a session abstract is 500 words and for a paper  
abstract 250 words.  This information is posted on the AAA meetings  
website (http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/) under "Call for Papers and  
Participation Rules."  Before submitting, we encourage you to read  
through "Submission Guidelines and Requirements" at http:// 
www.aaanet.org/meetings/presenters/cfp_subguide.cfm.  You must be a  
member of the AAA in order to submit a paper.  If you are not  
currently a member, please visit http://www.aaanet.org/membership/.

Invited Sessions:

For those of you unfamiliar with the conference structure, invited  
sessions are, in the words of the AAA, "innovative, synthesizing  
sessions intended to reflect the state-of-the-art in the major  
subfields and the thematic concerns of those fields."  The SLA  
Program Committee is responsible for selecting sessions for invited  
status; we are especially interested in panels that feature cutting  
edge research and theory, topics that cross subdisciplines, and/or  
topics related to this year's meeting theme.  If you are organizing a  
panel and would like it to be considered for invited status, please  
notify me of your interest via email (kira.hall at colorado.edu) as soon  
as possible, but by March 3rd at the very latest.  Again, you must  
submit your materials both to the AAA website and to me by the March  
3rd deadline.  (When you submit your panel to the website, you will  
not yet know whether or not it has been chosen for invited status, so  
simply submit it as a volunteered session.  We can always change the  
session status later, should your panel be selected as invited.)

Important note:  The SLA unfortunately has very few allotted spaces  
for invited sessions:  we can choose either 3 single panels, or 1  
double panel plus 1 single panel.  We therefore encourage you to  
consider the possibility of having another AAA section co-sponsor  
your session together with the SLA, so that we can put more invited  
sessions onto the conference program.  If there are other AAA  
sections that you feel your panel might interest, please specify this  
on your application to me and I will consult with the Program Section  
Editor in those sections to see if there is a possibility for  
collaboration.  You can also contact other Section Program Editors  
directly on your own, to see if co-sponsorship might be a  
possibility.  For a list of other AAA sections, consult http:// 
www.aaanet.org/sections/.

If your panel is selected for invited status, I will send you an  
email to this effect before April 1, with a password to use on-line.   
You will need this password for the proposal form so as to complete  
your on-line submission by the general deadline.

Conference Theme:

Please refer to the AAA website for more details on the theme, at  
http://dev.aaanet.org/meetings/presenters/theme_chrisman.cfm.  The  
AAA elaborates on the theme as follows:

“This theme provides us the opportunity to critically examine  
anthropology's relationships: across subfields, with other  
disciplines, with our many publics, and with contemporary social  
problems. The Executive Program Committee envisions healthy debate as  
we confront methodological, ethical, and epistemological concerns  
that unite and divide us; as well as discuss the challenges, risks,  
and opportunities for growth enabled by this dialog.

Inclusion, Collaboration, and Engagement are ideas that have been  
central to anthropology throughout the discipline’s history and they  
are particularly important today. Anthropologists, scholars in other  
disciplines, and the general public have begun to recognize that  
anthropology has a great deal to contribute in this era of  
globalization. Still, our discipline remains a mystery to many and we  
are often not approached when social science information is needed.  
Moreover, anthropologists are conflicted about whether and how to  
participate in important public debates. Although there are the  
myriad attempts to develop a public interest anthropology, we are  
also wary of activism and public engagement, particularly as we  
recall government influence on anthropology during times of war.

This theme deserves our scholarly exploration. Analysis of the  
processes that promote inclusion, collaboration and engagement for  
positive human outcomes is a common area of interest for both  
academic and applied/practicing anthropologists, as is clear  
communication of anthropological perspectives to the wider public.”

Additional details:

Finally, the AAA has again asked Program Section Editors to encourage  
their memberships to consider allotting more time for discussion and  
experimenting with non-traditional formats.  You can certainly fall  
back on the tried-and-true standard sorts of formats if you wish, but  
the SLA Program Committee is eager to consider variation

Please contact me if you have any questions.  I'm looking forward to  
another exciting AAA Annual Meeting with strong SLA participation!

Kira Hall

***************
Kira Hall, Associate Professor
Director, Program in Culture, Language, and Social Practice (CLASP)
Departments of Linguistics and Anthropology
Campus Box 295
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado  80309-0295
Phone: (303)492-2912
Fax: (303)492-4416
Web: www.colorado.edu/linguistics/faculty/kira_hall/

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