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[onion]

Hi Katherine Parr!  Nice to "see" you.

Although I didn't go (and haven't been but once), the American Studies Association, which just held its annual meeting in DC this past weekend, was, by all accounts, a blast.  My friends who went came back energized and excited and turned on by some really cool sound interdisciplinary research.  And very, very few interviews take place at ASA.  Coincidence?

[katherineparr]

The Bob Show sounds like my kind of panel. Did he run back and forth to the podium a la Woody Allen cross-examining himself?

OAH was, as you say, kind of sad. Way too big a venue (a presidential session was in a huge room with maybe 20-50 attendees. Bad times), and not good for socializing for some reason. I saw some interesting panels, though, and generally enjoyed listening to papers in my field for once.

Onion, I hear that the ASA is fun. And I've been to some regional ASA/PCA conferences that were good. You can go the whole weekend listening to papers about Buffy, if you like. I ate a garlic-flavored jelly bean at one session on food (here's my review: BAD).

[the_honey_badger]

The Bob Show sounds like my kind of panel. Did he run back and forth to the podium a la Woody Allen cross-examining himself?

OAH was, as you say, kind of sad. Way too big a venue (a presidential session was in a huge room with maybe 20-50 attendees. Bad times), and not good for socializing for some reason. I saw some interesting panels, though, and generally enjoyed listening to papers in my field for once.

Onion, I hear that the ASA is fun. And I've been to some regional ASA/PCA conferences that were good. You can go the whole weekend listening to papers about Buffy, if you like. I ate a garlic-flavored jelly bean at one session on food (here's my review: BAD).

The Bob Smith Show was a hoot. he said": "if I go over? Well, who will stop me?"  the audience was small but good natured and after his paper he said: "thanks for helping me build my c.v. by actually *presenting* while here, now I'll let you critique it."  the discussion was actually useful for once because everyone had a siege mentality because of no-shows.

The last time I went to a PCA there were mimes in the lobby. That cured me. I fear mimes, clowns, robots and ventriloquist dummies.

[sibyl]

Clearly the tail (the meat market and the book exhibit) is wagging the dog (the papers).  Which is understandable. 

I get why larryc says a boycott is the way to go.  I think that entropy is going that way -- at least based on the number of pleading emails I got after I let my membership lapse.  Of course, the irony is that if you want historians to agree on something, the AHA (organization) is the best venue for doing that.  I wonder whether it wouldn't be more useful to create alternatives, like smaller regional meetings that are all about the papers; the scholars will come for the scholarship, and eventually the annual meeting will wither and die.  But as soon as I say that, I realize it won't work.  While an article in the AHR still carries much cachet, the monograph has long been the coin of the realm for historians, so senior historians and working historians alike often bypass the paper/article stage and go straight to writing a book; the people who present papers are generally people who are trying to make lemons out of lemonade, like historians trying to convert book chapters into articles and papers for the sake of their tenure file or grad students trying to do the same with dissertation chapters.  So the annual meeting continues to carry out this function too, which only adds to the desperation business. 

So I understand why it won't change but I don't know how to fix it.  Which is, I guess, why I'm a historian.

[dellaroux]

Or why not both, a regional feeder system in which presenters get invited up from their local venues to speak in a less congested, but more focused national one?

[t_r_b]

I wonder whether it wouldn't be more useful to create alternatives, like smaller regional meetings that are all about the papers; the scholars will come for the scholarship, and eventually the annual meeting will wither and die. 

Actually, that's happening already, but not (in most cases) under the auspices of the AHA. We go to smaller, regional and/or thematically focused conferences for the scholarship and intellectual community. Those are generally run by groups other than the AHA: for Americanists alone, those include OAH, SHA, WHA, SHEAR, SHAFR, ASE, OIEAHC, ASA, the Berks, and who knows how many others. That adds up to a whole lot of opportunities to present your work, hear about what others are doing, and network. So we don't really need the AHA to fulfill that role at all. Hence the importance of the book exhibit and meat market.

If the AHA were much smaller, and featured more panels on broad comparative, thematic, and methodological issues, then it would be more useful to me as a scholarly forum for historians from a wide range of fields to share ideas. But that would be a radically different kind of conference, and a much smaller and less well-funded organization.

[onion]

I wonder whether it wouldn't be more useful to create alternatives, like smaller regional meetings that are all about the papers; the scholars will come for the scholarship, and eventually the annual meeting will wither and die. 

Actually, that's happening already, but not (in most cases) under the auspices of the AHA. We go to smaller, regional and/or thematically focused conferences for the scholarship and intellectual community. Those are generally run by groups other than the AHA: for Americanists alone, those include OAH, SHA, WHA, SHEAR, SHAFR, ASE, OIEAHC, ASA, the Berks, and who knows how many others. That adds up to a whole lot of opportunities to present your work, hear about what others are doing, and network. So we don't really need the AHA to fulfill that role at all. Hence the importance of the book exhibit and meat market.

If the AHA were much smaller, and featured more panels on broad comparative, thematic, and methodological issues, then it would be more useful to me as a scholarly forum for historians from a wide range of fields to share ideas. But that would be a radically different kind of conference, and a much smaller and less well-funded organization.

I've noticed that they've been adding more "professional development" panels in recent years, geared toward grad students and other people not yet in, but seeking, TT positions.  They're also expanding they're teaching/pedagogy/methodology panels.  Could this be in response to the fact that many Americans seek their intellectual sustenance elsewhere, as TRB noted?

[t_r_b]

I've noticed that they've been adding more "professional development" panels in recent years, geared toward grad students and other people not yet in, but seeking, TT positions.  They're also expanding they're teaching/pedagogy/methodology panels.  Could this be in response to the fact that many Americans seek their intellectual sustenance elsewhere, as TRB noted?

Probably, though I'm skeptical about the usefulness of the professional development stuff. For one thing, job market savvy is learned not from a two-hour panel, but rather from years of picking the brain of everyone you meet who knows as much or more about academia than you do. If you haven't done the latter, the former isn't going to help you much. For another thing, when I was at the AHA, I was far too busy either going to interviews, prepping for interviews, or decompressing with friends about the insanity of interviews to bother attending any of the job market panels. For yet another thing, I doubt that there is anything you could learn at an AHA panel that you couldn't learn just as effectively, for free, by reading old CHE fora threads.

The professional development/job market prep stuff would actually be much more useful if they held the AHA during the summer: i.e., not during interview season, but rather when people are starting to think about going on the market. Going to a session entitled, "how to succeed in a conference interview" on the same day as my interview will probably not help me much, especially when the main advice entails how to prepare. Or worse yet, imagine the poor souls who sent out 30 job applications and got only one interview going to the "how to write a job letter" workshop and learning about everything they did wrong - several months too late. That's the sort of thing that makes me think that the purpose of all this stuff is not actually to help job applicants, but rather to make the AHA look like it cares about job applicants.

I think featuring more pedagogy panels is good, though here I'm skeptical about the content. Presentations on actual research in the teaching and learning of history would be great. Presentations consisting of, "here is my survey syllabus: it's way cool," not so much. And from what I've seen, the latter tends to predominate. But I will enthusiastically support anything the AHA can do to encourage more of the former.

[onion]

That's the sort of thing that makes me think that the purpose of all this stuff is not actually to help job applicants, but rather to make the AHA look like it cares about job applicants.

Yes.  I've thought of it as a bit of pandering, and a way to suck those membership and registration fees out of grad students and the un/underemployed among us.

[katherineparr]

Well, I think they're much more sincere than they seem. There are people at the AHA and on the AHA Council who genuinely want the Annual Meeting to be more friendly and helpful for grad students.

BUT, that definitely stems from a desire to have more graduate student members. The AHA has constant problems with membership, and it's concerned that younger scholars and (especially) grads simply don't sign up. So the effort to get grads involved is both sincere and self-interested.

That doesn't say it's effective. I agree that much of what's offered is not.

[polly_mer]

The professional development/job market prep stuff would actually be much more useful if they held the AHA during the summer: i.e., not during interview season, but rather when people are starting to think about going on the market. Going to a session entitled, "how to succeed in a conference interview" on the same day as my interview will probably not help me much, especially when the main advice entails how to prepare. Or worse yet, imagine the poor souls who sent out 30 job applications and got only one interview going to the "how to write a job letter" workshop and learning about everything they did wrong - several months too late. That's the sort of thing that makes me think that the purpose of all this stuff is not actually to help job applicants, but rather to make the AHA look like it cares about job applicants.

I agree that for those kinds of workshops (and they should be workshops, not panels)  to work, you have to go before you go on the market.  That way you can take what you learned and run it by your advisor and mentors to pick the brains of the people who know for whether these things really work or are just theoretical.  Then, you would be ready to send out fabulous materials that you have been working on for a few months when the calls start appearing in the summer.

As KatherineParr mentions, while that method works just fine over here in the sciences because our graduate students do go to conferences to present for years before they are on the market, history would have to get its act together to push more students to attend before the year that they absolutely must go because that is interview year.

Perhaps the job search prep/interview tips workshops are another thing that the regional or specialized meetings could offer that would help the field so that graduate students would attend before they go on the market.

I think featuring more pedagogy panels is good, though here I'm skeptical about the content. Presentations on actual research in the teaching and learning of history would be great. Presentations consisting of, "here is my survey syllabus: it's way cool," not so much. And from what I've seen, the latter tends to predominate. But I will enthusiastically support anything the AHA can do to encourage more of the former.

Is there something like the American Association of History Teachers that could hold joint meetings or help organize panels for the AHA?  I ask because the American Association of Physics Teachers, for obvious reasons, has strong overlap with the American Physical Society so that we do have good sessions on research-based teaching and learning of science.  We do have the occasional clunker talk, but most of the talks are practical things that can be used in the classroom that are shown to be effective under certain conditions with data to support them or negative results of things that were effective with one student population, but are not effective with other student populations.

[kedves]

This is probably too cynical, but from my outsider's perspective, it looks like a scheme to tax the poor.

[threefive]

Is there something like the American Association of History Teachers that could hold joint meetings or help organize panels for the AHA?  I ask because the American Association of Physics Teachers, for obvious reasons, has strong overlap with the American Physical Society so that we do have good sessions on research-based teaching and learning of science.  We do have the occasional clunker talk, but most of the talks are practical things that can be used in the classroom that are shown to be effective under certain conditions with data to support them or negative results of things that were effective with one student population, but are not effective with other student populations.

The AAPT is having their winter (Feb.) meeting at the same time and in the same place as the APS April meeting. Yes. The APS April meeting is in February. Why? Who knows. At least they make fun of themselves in the promotional literature.

It's actually pretty competitive to get a talk at an AAPT conference. Without data, or at least the appearance of data, then there is little chance you'll end up with a talk. Very few (one or two slip by) talks consist of "here's my syllabus. Ain't it cool?" The APS is different. EVERYONE gets a talk or a poster.

I've never even seen the interview section at the APS meetings. I've never even heard of a department doing interviews at the APS. They certainly don't rely on job candidates to keep seats filled. I'm wondering if polly_mer is right about the AHA learning something from the APS.

[erzuliefreda]

History teachers routinely participate in the OAH. AP teachers are funded to participate and attend sessions. Their attendance is one of the reasons why the OAH rocks and the AHA sucks. They would not fit in as well at the AHA.

[whiteknight]

Crossthreading from LarryC's thread:

http://www.historianstv.com/

If you scroll down the menu on the right, there is a video for the job center. It gives you very little idea of how tense the cattle market is, but you can see the screened interview "rooms" in the background.