FW: Proposed CAE sessions for 2002 annual meeting

[Clark, John]

Yes, I was referring to the *organization* rather than the *selection* of
sessions. Face-to-face, who-you-know networks will almost always be the
first and foremost way that sessions get off the ground; I do not bemoan
that. Yet, I have admired CAE's effort to "open things up,"  and to
officially post prospective sessions WHILE THE SESSIONS ARE STILL IN THE
PROCESS OF BEING ORGANIZED. CAE's effort was in response to heated and
painful discussions about how *white* the panels were. As anthropologists
(orinthologists?), we all know that however comfortable and positively
intimate face-to-face networks are, they are notoriously conservative and
flock together birds of very similar feathers

John T. Clark

> ----------
> From: 	gabriella Modan
> Sent: 	Friday, January 25, 2002 10:50 AM
> To: 	Clark, John; 'linganth at cc.rochester.edu'
> Subject: 	Re: FW: Proposed CAE sessions for 2002 annual meeting
>
> I think John's idea of promoting open calls for AAA sessions is a great
> one
> that we all could benefit from.  Organizing panels through
> already-established networks has its advantages, and there's certainly a
> place for it.  But having open calls for panel papers is a way to both be
> more inclusive, and to have a wider range of topics in panels.  There are
> both intellectual and practical/networking advantages to to open
> calls.  Having organized panels both ways, I've found that having open
> calls has enabled me to put together panels with papers that connect with
> each other in interesting ways, and ways that I might not have thought
> about sitting in my office and using the introspective approach (i.e.,
> what
> work do I already know of that's relevant to this topic?)  Organizing
> panels openly is also really beneficial for stimulating new working
> relationships among scholars who may not have known each other, or known
> of
> each others' work, before.  I think SLA as a body of scholars could really
>
> benefit from this approach.
>
> Galey Modan
>
>