John Protevi over at NewApps has presented this comment from the Feminist Philosophers for discussion:
Why not kill a bunch of birds with one stone and just have fewer conferences? They’re terrible for the environment and a completely decadent use of money that should be going towards financial aid for students or helping lower-income people heat their homes. Even at prestigious conferences, I find the papers are often lackluster, and at any rate, I consistently find that I could have learned just as much by staying at home, reading papers from authors’ websites, and Skyping or e-mailing them.
As to the present point — a gajillion conferences all across the globe, on hyper-specialized topics, often by invitation, with sketchy review procedures when not, and the prospect of being the only woman at quasi-party full of dudes in a faraway land — of COURSE you’re going to get gender disparities. So yay to the GCC, but I’d like to see an Anti-Conference Campaign (ACC) as well!
I think the discussion in Protevi's thread is illuminating and productive. However, I'd like to weigh in here on something that hasn't been dicussed over there. The discussion over there seems to divide broadly into three perspectives: (1) mostly senior members of the profession who think (along with the original commenter) that conferences tend to be lackluster and not very useful, (2) graduate students, who find the pressure of attending conferences financially burdensome, and (3) those who think that conferences are good because they are ways to share one's work with others.
My experience as an untenured (and indeed, non-tenure-track) member of the profession is that conferences are good (for me, at any rate) for another reason entirely: they've help me keep a positive attitude, even when times are tough. Since I received my PhD, I– like many people in my position — have struggled to find my feet both as a researcher and as a teacher. There have been times (fortunately now mostly in the rear-view mirror) when I felt I would never publish, and that I wasn't a very good teacher. "Keeping on keeping on" in these situations was tough, and conferences helped. Getting away from the day-to-day struggle to just talk philosophy with other members of the profession was refreshing, and energizing. So too was the feeling that someone thought that my papers were worth discussing for an hour or so. I think that, beyond the work and such, a good profession should also exist in part for the good and well-being of its members. Going to conferences might be tough for grad students, and for that reason maybe they should face less pressure to go. And going to conferences might not be that fun or interesting for many senior members of the profession — so perhaps they shouldn't go as much. But this is not everyone. Going to conferences can be a valuable resource for early-career faculty to not only share their work and get much-needed feedback (this is especially true for people like me in tiny departments); they can also be valuable in terms of social support. Being an early-career academic is tough, and conferences do — at least in my experience — serve an important role in this important latter regard.
One final thought: I always find myself puzzled when people say they hate going to APA meetings and such because the papers "aren't that great." For my part, I tend to find myself in session after session that I consider interesting as hell! Am I alone? (Maybe!)
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