Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 45.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> (15)
Subject: Re: 14.0041 down with conferences
[2] From: John Lavagnino <John.Lavagnino@kcl.ac.uk> (27)
Subject: Re: 14.0041 down with conferences
[3] From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com> (33)
Subject: Re: 14.0041 down with conferences
[4] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> (41)
Subject: conferences and the intellectual life
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Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 07:01:46 +0100
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Re: 14.0041 down with conferences
The problem with conferences is that it's not a random group of people who
are excluded; it's a specific group - i.e. the unaffiliated and/or the
poor. This creates a closure in academia - the conferences I've been to
have been 90% social/networking, and people who can't make them simply
don't get the contacts.
The second point is, that we all know that conferences cost; I've done
some conference organization myself. But you can plan right from the start
to make it easier on people who literally can't afford attending otherwise
and who have been asked to present and/or be on a panel.
These issues are serious, I think, because already there is too great a
distance between academia/humanities and the street - and basically closed
conferences make it worse.
Alan (sondheim@panix.com)
Internet Text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Partial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
Trace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 07:02:33 +0100
From: John Lavagnino <John.Lavagnino@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 14.0041 down with conferences
It's true that the conference that can pay all the expenses of all the
participants is rare. But funding for students in particular is
something that many more conferences could arrange: there are more
people and institutions willing to contribute money for students than
for general expenses or other participants, for quite good reasons:
it's pretty likely that a student actually needs the money, a small
amount of money does actually make a difference, and it also makes
more of a difference to get to your first or second conference rather
than to your twentieth. Much the same applies for any group of people
who face the financial barrier: there's a good argument to be made for
a subsidy and there are people willing to be persuaded to offer
support.
It's best for the conference organizers to line up such funding
themselves and announce it when registration opens, though; and the
pitfall here is that work on this needs to start very early, because
some willing donors are foundations with rather infrequent deadlines.
You need to be working on this from the moment you know the
conference's date, and not at some convenient time later on when
you're less busy. Scholarly organizations should also consider
offering their own grants for this purpose, rather than leaving it up
to whoever organizes their conference in any particular year, since
the amount of money involved can actually be found in the budget even
of fairly small organizations: I note that the Association for
Literary and Linguistic Computing <http://www.allc.org/> has for some
years offered bursaries to its annual conference for students and
younger scholars.
John Lavagnino
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 07:03:23 +0100
From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com>
Subject: Re: 14.0041 down with conferences
I suppose I should say, by way of disclaimer, that I am now Emeritus,
and have no travel money. But I still try to get to at least 2 or 3
meetings per year, though there is nothing whatever now that will
"count" for any pay or rank questions.... It costs me over $100 per
year, a big chunk from retirement money, and I have had to beg off from
several meetings because of this.
Nonetheless. THere are several reasons for having meetings, and
"conferences" via computer are not substitutes in any way at all.
Willard already mentioned one category --face-to-face meetings with
colleagues. This has several important aspects: there is the joy of
seeing old friends, which gets keener year by year. There is the chance
to ask someone "Just what did you mean by that last article?', etc,
which is much easier to answer in actual talk than via e-mail.
Then there are the chances to mention a friend and/or former student who
might be a good fit for a job opening. (On this, I stay away from the
big "meat market" meetings, such as MLA, and have stayed away for over
30 years -- it has never made the slightest difference in my career that
I can see. I prefer meetings without job appointments.)
The book exhibits are very important -- it is much better to walk around
and compare offerings, pick up the books and look at them, perhaps read
a chapter, buy them at the meeting price (often 30% or more off list),
talk to publisher's reps about forthcoming books, even make appointments
to talk about possibly publishing ones' own work....often seeing and
handling the books is more important than going to hear papers. And
then there are the used book dealers who set up at meetings and often
are sources for hard-to-get books at reasonable prices.
There is the chance to enjoy food and drink with old friends and new
friends.
And for some, there is the "same time, next year kind of affair which it
is often fun to watch from a distance....
None of this can be replaced by computers, no matter how gee-whiz the
software might be.
There are people who cannot get to meetings. I feel sorry for them but
I don't see that as a reason to abolish meetings.
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 07:05:36 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: conferences and the intellectual life
Perhaps I am romanticising the past, but what I know of it suggests that
the professionalisation of the disciplines has not been an entirely good
thing. I think it was once far more the case than now, to a significant
degree, that individuals who had obtained advanced degrees but not academic
jobs would continue to work in the fields in which they had been trained.
J. Bloggs, manager in the Acme Tool and Die Works, would write articles on
Virgil, and these would be published. Now Mr or Ms Bloggs is highly
unlikely to have the opportunity. Has professionalisation resulted in an
altogether higher calibre of work? I wonder. It seems to have resulted in
exclusion of those who are not within the academy, who don't walk the walk
and talk the talk because they simply haven't the time to practice.
Be that as it may, it is clear that the academy cannot employ all those
whom it trains to the academic way of life. At one university I know well
it was said in open meeting that the English department produced more PhDs
in one year than the entire country in which this university is located
could employ in 10. The crude economics of higher education in this case
meant that the department would be severely penalised for doing the right
thing, but never mind. Suppose, unrealistically, that this university and
others like it actually told the incoming students what their employment
prospects would be. Still, high-minded students would want to go ahead,
undergo the rigours and obtain the advanced degree. So, the question is,
how do we provide for an intellectual life to proceed outside the narrow
confines of the academy?
I ask that question, then pause. Isn't the asking of it a rather damaging
admission? Doesn't that question signal an end to the World as We Know It?
"Hmmm, the ground is rather sticky here, and black. I cannot seem to move
my feet...."
Allow me to recommend very highly Jim O'Donnell's book, The Avatars of the
Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace (Harvard, 1998), which effectively and
eloquently locates the concerns of Humanist in our broad intellectual
tradition and reflects on the changes which asking the question I just
asked clearly points to. "We are immensely fortunate", O'Donnell says,
"that academics have been in the front line of computing and networks. This
gives us now an advantage -- technical, intellectual, and even just
financial -- that we would be fools to squander." (p. 148). Are we fools?
Can we make the world-wide electronic seminar anything like what it could be?
WM
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. Willard McCarty, Senior Lecturer, King's College London
voice: +44 (0)20 7848 2784 fax: +44 (0)20 7848 5081
<Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk> <http://ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/>
maui gratias agere
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