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[promovenda]

A major [humanities] conference is happening this spring, and one professor has said that I really should attend. However, my dissertation advisor advises against it, citing as reasons that 1) the topic of the conference this year is not exactly what I am researching and would not be useful at this stage, 2) since I'm not giving a paper it is awkward to be there (advisor only attends conferences at which she gives papers as a matter of principle), and 3) I should concentrate on my dissertation writing at this point, and not distract myself.

I'm sure I'll follow my advisor's advice in this instance, since she is the powerful person in my situation. However, I wondered what the rest of you thought it? Isn't it good to enlarge one's knowledge and make new contacts by attending conferences? I feel somewhat sorry to miss this one.

[expatinuk]

If you can afford it, go. You learn quite a bit by attending a conference and NOT presenting a paper before you actually attend one where you do present a paper.

[bacardiandlime]

I have been to plenty of conferences I haven't presented at. I've been to the big one in my field (AHA), but also anything that was on at my Masters and PhD institutions while I was there (or at other institutions nearby), if it related to my subject.

I've often been pleasantly surprised by how much work that doesn't at first glance have much to do with my own area turns out to have some useful parallels.
You definitely want to have attended a few conferences before you first present at one!

Attending conferences has enabled me to meet a lot of people working in the field, and I've made several friends that way.

[dellaroux]

Go if you can afford it at all. There is a culture and a way of being at conferences that, as others have said above, can only be understood by having been experienced.

There are also usually some really good book displays, by which to increase your library so that you'll really be able to call yourself an academic (see elsewhere...) you get to meet people you've only read about before, and at least one conference I attended had an excellent dance band at the evening party.

These are all good reasons, but the best is that you will feel and become a part of an academic community of people whose work you can, for the most part, respect and you will learn how to make your contributions to that community in a context of dedication and humor.

While much can be said against them (power politicking and all the rest do, of course, exist) it is both humbling and challenging to be in such a setting.

Take your laptop with you and work on your dissertation every day before breakfast for an hour or so, to keep continuity; take an hour after dinner and work on it a bit more if you can, maybe take some time prowling the book stalls for sources and with particular issues in mind that have to do with your research to stay on track.

But if you can do it, (and without upsetting your advisor--are they presenting? That might be worth seeing, too--it's worth it to go.

[untenured]

I could recommend attending. I'm not sure why the advisor is so against this.  The 'attending with paper only' insistence does not make sense.

Assuming that 1) you can easily afford it, 2) you are willing to network and attend sessions, and 3) can tolerate a few days away from your diss, then I recommend attending.

Conferences are where the social magic happens.  This is where you build your reputation and get on the inside track for jobs.  Talk to as many people as possible no matter what their 'standing' in academic life.  Make friends.  Have fun!

Untenured

[galactic_hedgehog]

The advisor may be thinking that you might try to get her to pay for it and is against doing so if you're not presenting.  I can't say I disagree with her on the $$$ issue, but agree with the others that you should go if you can afford it.

[bacardiandlime]

I don't recall every even asking my advisor about going to conferences where I wasn't speaking. It honestly never occurred to me to ask - I would never have thought I needed permission for what I did with my own time and money. It seems a lot of people (on these boards, not just the OP), seem to ask their doctoral supervisors for a lot more guidance than I ever did (and to give their advisor more 'control' over their lives: who the hell is your advisor to say you shouldn't spend a weekend attending a conference as a spectator? what's it to her anyway? bizarre)

[neutralname]

1) the topic of the conference this year is not exactly what I am researching and would not be useful at this stage,
2) since I'm not giving a paper it is awkward to be there (advisor only attends conferences at which she gives papers as a matter of principle), and
3) I should concentrate on my dissertation writing at this point, and not distract myself.

1 & 3.  It all depends on your priorities.  If your #1 priority is getting the dissertation finished, and you give no priority to anything else, then this is good advice.  But if you want to see and possibly meet other people in your field, see what the conference papers are like, and possibly hear new work of tangential relevance to your own, then you should go.  
2.  If this is a "major conference" as you say, this is nonsense.  It would only apply to small specialized conferences where everyone knows each other already, and even then, they would have to be a bunch of snot nosed gits to want to make you feel awkward rather than welcoming you.

I doubt the advisor's reasons are to do with money: this is the humanities, so there probably isn't any money.  You'd be mainly funding yourself, maybe with a little departmental or dean's funding if you were lucky.

[canadatourismguy]

Networking is critical...Get your facetime in.

CTG

[grasshopper]

I could recommend attending. I'm not sure why the advisor is so against this.  The 'attending with paper only' insistence does not make sense.

Ditto. Especially since, at the diss stage, you're close enough to completion that you should really be thinking of networking.

[promovenda]

Wow, thanks everyone for the quick responses. To add to the information, I have been at several conferences already, so this wouldn't be my first conference experience. There would be no money for it from my department and it would be a financial stretch for me although maybe doable (involving flight and hotel). No one I know is presenting (that I know of; the website doesn't yet have the program listed). Yes, I think my advisor's main thing is that she wants me to keep my nose to the grindstone on the diss.

[tenured_feminist]

Is your advisor trying to tell you that she doesn't think you're progressing quickly enough on the dissertation? If so, and if the conference would be enough of a distraction to slow you down more, perhaps you should rethink this.

(I've had the occasional student who would go to a conference and come back with a great, super-brilliant idea about reformulating the entire dissertation that would involve digging into a whole new body of unfamiliar literature -- for this type of student, my advice is to look but not touch.)

[promovenda]

Possibly. Maybe I shouldn't have asked her advice, and just gone. On the other hand, I'm at a European university, and the "Doktorvater"-type thinking reigns here. I think that asking her opinion [blessing] is something that others would have done too. An intense advisor-advisee relationship, but then the advisor has your back and will get you through, even around opponents. At least, I've seen her do it for others.

[msparticularity]

I have known a fair number of academics who just generally regard conferences as an indulgence and/or a waste of time. These folks are annoyed by the whole idea of conferences, but periodically bow to necessity and submit papers--grudgingly. If your advisor is one of these, she likely really does think that going to a conference to attend sessions, think new thoughts and network with your peers is a self-indulgent distraction from what you really ought to be doing.

If nothing else, I think you may want to be sensitive to the possibility that going to this conference will cause her to categorize you as not fundamentally serious.

[dellaroux]

Not serious--repeat NOT SERIOUS, just kidding--but, there's always the chance that your advisor is reading a paper you wrote and doesn't want you to know!

(I'm only saying this because long, long ago, when my dad was working on an MA at a U.S. State U., he and two other students discovered that their advisor was forcing them to write their theses on topics they were only marginally interested in...which made no sense at all until they discovered that he had planned to include them as chapters in a book he was writing (and didn't apparently intend to give them credit for.)

At that place and time, there was less legal recourse for three fairly young, close-to-penniless grad students, and they all just quit the program, and got jobs.)

But these days, text is too easily traceable, so I doubt if anyone would try anything like that.

So I repeat--so as not to get you worried--just kidding....

And since it sounds as if you have a good deal of conference-going under your belt, there's less need for it than I originally suggested.

I had a decision like that to make, (a research trip I'd committed to, might have opted out of, but already had the tickets for and would have lost a fair bit if I had cancelled out) and although it played a bit of hob with my completion schedule, it meant I now have an overseas research partner and two article requests for journals there, that might not have happened later.

A chacun son goût...