Small panels and associated suggestions

[George Fowler]

Greetings, SEELangers!
     I caught the discussion of small AATSEEL panels and the host of
ensuing unrelated suggestions only today; my electronic lifeline has been
down for 24 hours, and I'm only just now catching up. (Amazing how much it
aches when this happens!) David is out of the country for a few weeks, so
let me contribute my $0.02 worth; he and I are pretty much on the same
wavelength on all this.
     The major historical reason (as I understand it, and if I misstate
this I apologize in advance) for the one paper per person limit has to do
with the tendency of panel chairs to seek out well-known scholars to fill
up their panels. In the late 80's this meant that some emminent scholars
might be asked to give several papers, and for such people, this is often
not a chore, since they have a large body of research to draw upon,
recombine, and so forth. At the time there were far fewer panels, and so
younger people, especially graduate students with no name whatsoever, often
found it difficult to break in. When Chris Tomei took over the program
committee (I don't know what year that was), she quickly identified this as
a problem and corrected it by prohibiting multiple presentations.
     Bear in mind that the AATSEEL conference serves several functions.
Aside from the academic side of the conference, there are also the
networking side (this is the main opportunity for many of us to get
together with our colleagues from across the country, our grad school
roommates, and so forth) AND the meat-market/job hunting side. On the
academic side, we want the best papers presented we can find, which leads
to two conflicting urges. On the one hand, well-established scholars often
give *better* papers than second-year grad students; on this basis, if we
filled the program up with full professors, we might actually produce a
*better* conference. On the other hand, we seek diversity, fresh ideas, and
so forth, and rather than have one first-class scholar give four papers,
reflecting consistent methodology and some overlap of ideas, I personally
would rather have that person give ONE paper and enlist three more, maybe
two grad students and a junior faculty member. Then perhaps we'd get one
lemon out of the lot. So what?? Tak interesnee, zhivee. Besides, if there
are a few lousy papers, well, it allows us all to feel superior for a
little while (at least until we hear the discussion on our own papers). :-)
     On the networking side, we have to encourage people to attend AATSEEL,
or else they can't participate in it. How do most of us get funding to
come? By giving papers, of course! So we need to encourage diversity for
the practical reason that it improves attendance. I'm not concerned with
the balance sheet for the conference (although I recognize that
registration fees play a significant role in AATSEEL finances), but simply
with the range of participants.
     Finally, the meat-market side means that job candidates need a chance
to establish at least some glimmer of a reputation. This means they need to
participate actively in AATSEEL for a couple of years, at any rate, and the
best way to do this is by giving papers, which brings us back full circle
to the diversity argument.
     Now, on small panels. I like 'em, both as a panelist (greedy for time)
and an audience member (more time for leisurely presentation, which is
easier to follow; more time for discussion, if it arises; longer breaks if
the panel ends earlier). I think three or four papers are both fine. Five
is pushing it (oops, I am chairing a panel with five people right now,
ahem; but two of them are relatively iffy). Two suggests the absence of any
critical mass, and I would rather encourage such panels either to seek at
least one more panelist, or to disband, with the panelists distributed to
other needy and appropriate panels. This may be impossible in a given case,
but it's a goal. There is never any defense against no-shows, of course,
and awkward situations can arise unexpectedly at the conference (I recall a
Slovene linguistics panel that dwindled to one paper a couple of years
back, due to sickness of two participants and lack of travel funding for
someone from Slovenia).
     IMHO, what makes a panel memorable is a DISCUSSANT, with the
concomitant agreement of all concerned to provide papers in advance. A good
discussant can really make the discussion gel. This works best, of course,
if you enlist either a very good discussant (Wayles Browne is extraordinary
in linguistics, for example), or if the papers really cohere thematically,
so that it makes true sense to discuss them all together. All of this
requires additional organizational effort on the part of the chair. (And I
understand full well that "reassigning" a panelist from an undersubscribed
panel works against the effort for coherence.)
     One last issue was raised: the notion of panel overlaps. I believe
this was Loren Billings, who is obviously most concerned about linguistics
panels. Here's the problem. Suppose we decide that we don't want to have
ANY competing linguistics panels. Then we are confined to 13 panels,
because that's how many time slots there are. Well, what panels will fit in
that list? We have four geographic panels, all of them "traditional" within
AATSEEL: East, West, South, and Balkan. We now have a set of modular
panels: Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Historical,
Discourse/Pragmatics, Dialectology, Sociolinguistics. That's another 8,
bringing us to 12. Some of these are not exactly traditional, but I think
they are very well justified, each and every one of them. This allows us to
bring linguists together thematically in two respects: languages studied
(the first set) and subfield of linguistics (the second set). What else do
we have? We have two well-established and traditional Russian panels: The
Russian Verb and Colloquial Russian. That's 14. We have a couple of
well-established special topics: Grammatical Case and Inter-Slavic
Linguistics. That's 16. We have several narrow panels: Church Slavonic,
Colloquial Polish, Discourse Particles (which is likely to fail this year,
as it has no papers as of yet), Medieval Slavic Texts, and Non-Slavic
Languages (or maybe that should be in the geographic category). Some of
these continue, some may be one-shot affairs. That's 21, and I'm working
from memory, so I may have left something out. Oh, there's the Linguistics
roundtable on professional issues, whatever the exact title.
     The point of this (over-)lengthy exposition is to show that, despite
the desirability of prohibiting overlaps, what exactly would AATSEEL like
to ax from this list? Well, nothing; they're obviously all appropriate, and
respond to identifiable subsets of the AATSEEL linguistics division. Now
take the same approach and apply it to 19th century literature,
20th-century literature, and so forth: how can overlaps possibly be avoided
within these areas??? We should be happy that the AATSEEL program is
thriving to such an extent that we have to make hard choices as to what we
do. (Not quite like cable TV.)
     Sorry for the lengthy message. Hope some of you get through it!
     George Fowler

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Fowler                       GFowler at Indiana.Edu [Email]
Dept. of Slavic Languages         **1-317-726-1482 [home] ** [Try here first!]
Ballantine 502                      1-812-855-2624/-2608/-9906 [dept.]
Indiana University                  1-812-855-2829 [office]
Bloomington, IN  47405  USA         1-812-855-2107 [dept. fax]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~