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[the_honey_badger]

Ah, well, we are in one of those "undesirable" locations and system pay is lousy so sunny San Diego sounds GREAT to our crowd---if it was January in Pittsburgh? They probably would have decided they could skip it.

BTW, I just asked someone I know at a press about why they bar non-registered people---I mean: they buy books too don't they?  Why the crazy security?  He *bitterly* replied that this is an AHA rule not the publishers. Apparently the book exhibit is very popular so for the non-interviewing attendees? They want their registration fees and found the exhibit forced many to register---but, but, but! the 'sessions' are free!  Interesting that they don't dare enforce that registration rule on the sessions if it is indeed all-about-the-scholarship.  Frankly, I've heard few AHA papers I thought were worth the effort and I'm a diligent attendee of those in my field. Give me OAH or a sub-field conference if I want to hear something substantive.

[whiteknight]

BTW, I just asked someone I know at a press about why they bar non-registered people---I mean: they buy books too don't they?  Why the crazy security?  He *bitterly* replied that this is an AHA rule not the publishers. Apparently the book exhibit is very popular so for the non-interviewing attendees? They want their registration fees and found the exhibit forced many to register---but, but, but! the 'sessions' are free!  Interesting that they don't dare enforce that registration rule on the sessions if it is indeed all-about-the-scholarship.

BINGO!!!

[polly_mer]

In addition, I remain bemused by the idea that going to the big conference in your field is somehow an imposition for people.  Yes, I recall the many times people have pointed out how the MLA or AHA is not relevant to their particular research area, which is nicely covered by a smaller conference.  However, in my experience, that just means that you should get your fellow niche area people together to form a group that can organize panels that you, collectively, want to see to make going to the conference worth while.  You can whine or you can change the system.  Of course, I am also in fields where one can usually apply for aid as a student or underemployed person to attend the conference because the biggest push is to lower the unemployment rate of good, but unlucky, people because industry is usually hiring, even if academia is not.

I usually like you, polly, but this attitude pisses me off. It isn't as easy as snapping one's fingers and making the AHA bureaucracy disappear.

Changing the system would require those wanting change to be in positions of power, which they are not. Getting into a position of power would take time and would likely be a danger to careers if the desire for change were known. Only senior scholars could take the risk, but they don't seem to see the problem, maybe b/c they are the ones benefitting. Those in power have no reason to change the system, so unless there is an Obama among historians that I don't know about, I don't see the bureaucracy changing.

As for simply getting a group together and proposing panels, that has been done, but there is no guarantee of acceptance on the program.

As for funding to attend the conference, those opportunities are rare. I'm not sure if the AHA even offers such funding; if so, it is miniscule.

<waves the white flag>

Apparently, history societies don't run like chemistry, materials engineering, physics, chemical engineering, or science education societies.  What I am accustomed to is that focused groups of people who are active in the field form a unit that decides what panels will be offered at the conferences and send those decisions to the bureaucracy.  All the bureaucracy does is handle logistics of getting a venue, registration, and shuffling the paperwork to the appropriate units.  The bureaucracy does not get to decide what panels will be held.  That is all left to the scientists.

To give a concrete example, the American Physical Society holds a March Meeting every year that includes several divisions--groups of people with similar interests.  The people interested in polymers have formed a division of polymer physics that has a chair, treasurer, secretary, and various committees, all made up from active scientists in the field.  One of the committees formed at every March Meeting is the program committee for the next meeting.  That committee takes suggestions by phone, email, or discussion at other conferences for the next several months.  In July, the committee finalizes the topics for the next March Meeting including the handful of invited sessions and submits it to the bureaucracy of the American Physical Society.  Come fall, people go to the APS March Meeting website and submit their abstracts in the appropriate topical category for contributed sessions and contact the program committee chair to volunteer to help run a contributed session on a particular topic.  The first week of December, scientists on the program committee and volunteer contributed session chairs sort all of the abstracts into interesting sessions.  They then notify the bureaucracy of the program who handles the notification of the schedule, getting the rooms and equipment arranged, and other purely logistical arrangements.

The money for scholarships comes from dues paid to the division and society, from voluntary donations from established people in the field, and from the work of one of the committees whose job it is to get sponsorship from industrial and government partners to further the cause of science and training young scientists.

In short, while the American Physical Society, like the other science societies I know, has a bureaucratic staff of non-scientists to handle logistics of organizing large groups of people, the people making the primary decisions about the program content are the scientists.  I assumed that the same held true with history.  If that's not the case, then I have to wonder why you people are not banding together to make that situation a reality outside of the bureaucratic process that doesn't work for you.

[hermance]

I cannot conceive of having enough free time on my hands that I would want to go to a big impersonal conference that cuts into both the end of the holidays and the beginning of the term just because it was "my turn."  If their selfish reason for wanting to go is because it is an all-expenses-paid chance to reconnect with good friends, that is understandable, but you have to have an awful lot of free time to want to do this because of some sort of power trip.  As for the "free vacation" thing, well, maybe if it were in Barbados and there were vast blocks of unscheduled time, I would get it, but they're going to be spending most of their time in cavernous, impersonal hotels, catching other people's colds.  San Diego is nice and all, but a Marriott or a Hilton is a Marriott or a Hilton.  That's a big old expenditure of time and energy to eat one or two overpriced, vaguely Mexican dinners and collect some shampoo samples.

I suspect that at least some of these colleagues are actually on the job market themselves and want their home department to pay for their trip to AHA so they don't have to fork over the money themselves, especially if they turn out not to get an interview.

Not that I've known people who have done this, of course.

[t_r_b]

Apparently, history societies don't run like chemistry, materials engineering, physics, chemical engineering, or science education societies.  What I am accustomed to is that focused groups of people who are active in the field form a unit that decides what panels will be offered at the conferences and send those decisions to the bureaucracy.  All the bureaucracy does is handle logistics of getting a venue, registration, and shuffling the paperwork to the appropriate units.  The bureaucracy does not get to decide what panels will be held.  That is all left to the scientists.

To give a concrete example, the American Physical Society holds a March Meeting every year that includes several divisions--groups of people with similar interests.  The people interested in polymers have formed a division of polymer physics that has a chair, treasurer, secretary, and various committees, all made up from active scientists in the field.  One of the committees formed at every March Meeting is the program committee for the next meeting.  That committee takes suggestions by phone, email, or discussion at other conferences for the next several months.  In July, the committee finalizes the topics for the next March Meeting including the handful of invited sessions and submits it to the bureaucracy of the American Physical Society.  Come fall, people go to the APS March Meeting website and submit their abstracts in the appropriate topical category for contributed sessions and contact the program committee chair to volunteer to help run a contributed session on a particular topic.  The first week of December, scientists on the program committee and volunteer contributed session chairs sort all of the abstracts into interesting sessions.  They then notify the bureaucracy of the program who handles the notification of the schedule, getting the rooms and equipment arranged, and other purely logistical arrangements.

The money for scholarships comes from dues paid to the division and society, from voluntary donations from established people in the field, and from the work of one of the committees whose job it is to get sponsorship from industrial and government partners to further the cause of science and training young scientists.

In short, while the American Physical Society, like the other science societies I know, has a bureaucratic staff of non-scientists to handle logistics of organizing large groups of people, the people making the primary decisions about the program content are the scientists.  I assumed that the same held true with history.  If that's not the case, then I have to wonder why you people are not banding together to make that situation a reality outside of the bureaucratic process that doesn't work for you.

Actually, I think the APS and AHA operate on similar principles. The people on the AHA programming committee are in fact historians, at least.

The difference, I suspect, is scale. The AHA is ridiculously massive. It routinely fills four major conference hotels, plus a large chunk of people saving money by staying in cheaper hotels 20 miles away. The number of panels per time slot runs well into the double digits. And of course the program committee has to sift through many more proposals than actually fit on the program. In "the pit," there are dozens of job applicants huddled together in the waiting area for each half-hour interview slot, and at any given moment there are liable to be just as many hovering in the hallways of the various hotels waiting for their turn to interview with a department that ponied up the money for a suite.

Another big difference between the AHA and the APS is that the APS presumably has a lot more government and industry money to play with by sponsoring grad students, etc. Not so the historians.

I would love to have an annual conference that brought together people from all fields of history to network and exchange ideas and plan collaborative projects. But the AHA doesn't do that, for several reasons:

1. There are too damn many of us.
2. We are too balkanized among all the different fields (most of the panels focus on a topic within a particular subfield, so people outside that subfield don't attend).
3. Generally speaking, conference papers suck anyway.
4. Most folks at the AHA are there either to interview or to be interviewed or both (I have a hunch that some of BTR's junior colleagues are so enthusiastic about going because they are - or hope to be - in the latter category - and on preview I see that Hermance thinks the same), and are too stressed out to do much of the fun networky stuff.

The system will not change until departments decide that they'll be better off cutting the AHA travel budget than cutting something more important to them. Last year, my department did phone interviews in large part because the chair suggested that going to the AHA would stretch our search budget to its limit and force us to cut into other conference travel money. As budgets tighten further, the AHA will probably suffer.

I disagree with whiteknight's suggestion that changing the bureaucracy (or Obama-style leadership) would fix things. If the AHA lost its role as the meat market of the historical profession, the AHA would cease to exist, at least in its current form. The annual conference would become a much smaller affair, and large chunks of the organization's revenue streams would disappear. If the conference interview disappeared, a very large proportion of the AHA membership would stop renewing. So it doesn't matter who is running the AHA. As long as the people running the AHA are dedicated to the organization's continued existence, they will do all they can to preserve the conference interview.

I do like the idea of a boycott. I have twice told SCs that I wouldn't be at the conference and could they please interview me by phone instead. In both cases, they agreed, and in both cases I subsequently got an on-campus interview, so opting out of the conference didn't hurt my candidacy any. If more people did that, hiring departments might start to get the message. The trouble is that so many job candidates are scared to death that tying their shoelaces inappropriately will cost them a job, and would never think to say anything to a SC other than "how high?"

[the_honey_badger]

I cannot conceive of having enough free time on my hands that I would want to go to a big impersonal conference that cuts into both the end of the holidays and the beginning of the term just because it was "my turn."  If their selfish reason for wanting to go is because it is an all-expenses-paid chance to reconnect with good friends, that is understandable, but you have to have an awful lot of free time to want to do this because of some sort of power trip.  As for the "free vacation" thing, well, maybe if it were in Barbados and there were vast blocks of unscheduled time, I would get it, but they're going to be spending most of their time in cavernous, impersonal hotels, catching other people's colds.  San Diego is nice and all, but a Marriott or a Hilton is a Marriott or a Hilton.  That's a big old expenditure of time and energy to eat one or two overpriced, vaguely Mexican dinners and collect some shampoo samples.

I suspect that at least some of these colleagues are actually on the job market themselves and want their home department to pay for their trip to AHA so they don't have to fork over the money themselves, especially if they turn out not to get an interview.

Not that I've known people who have done this, of course.

In any other year I'd be with you on this point but two things actually militate against this in our particular case in this particular year---both committees are interviewing for two lines each and will run morning until night.  Given who is on these committees, I also doubt it but I do completely believe (in these particular cases) that it very much IS a case of: "now I can swan around the AHA as the dispenser of jobs not the supplicant."  Again you'd need to understand some dynamics of who the junior people involved are that I can't/won't post but also, their smug repetition of the fact that they (and I quote): "can't wait to be on the other side of that table!"

I found the first time on an SC to be terrifying:  the responsibility was awesome and the empathy for those in the same place I had been just a few years before was a little overwhelming.  My junior colleagues seem to be completely unbothered by this-- I wish they were interviewing elsewhere....

[paul_robeson]

I do like the idea of a boycott. I have twice told SCs that I wouldn't be at the conference and could they please interview me by phone instead. In both cases, they agreed, and in both cases I subsequently got an on-campus interview, so opting out of the conference didn't hurt my candidacy any. If more people did that, hiring departments might start to get the message. The trouble is that so many job candidates are scared to death that tying their shoelaces inappropriately will cost them a job, and would never think to say anything to a SC other than "how high?"

I recently did this when I got an eleventh-hour request for a conference interview (abroad, no less) in one of my related fields.  I hope it turns out as well for me as it apparently did for t_r_b.

[polly_mer]

Actually, I think the APS and AHA operate on similar principles. The people on the AHA programming committee are in fact historians, at least.

The difference, I suspect, is scale. The AHA is ridiculously massive. It routinely fills four major conference hotels, plus a large chunk of people saving money by staying in cheaper hotels 20 miles away. The number of panels per time slot runs well into the double digits. And of course the program committee has to sift through many more proposals than actually fit on the program. In "the pit," there are dozens of job applicants huddled together in the waiting area for each half-hour interview slot, and at any given moment there are liable to be just as many hovering in the hallways of the various hotels waiting for their turn to interview with a department that ponied up the money for a suite.

FYI, the APS March Meeting runs about fifty parallel sessions in every time slot with roughly 7,000 papers given over the course of the week with each person limited to at most one contributed paper or poster with a very small number of people also allowed to present an invited talk.  While I don't know if the AHA is larger, the APS March Meeting is not by any means a small operation and it draws an international crowd.  One of the reasons that it is so large is that any one who turns in an abstract by the deadline gets a scheduled slot.  For that reason, in just the past ten years, the number of parallel sessions has ballooned from thirty to fifty. 

The American Chemical Society national meetings and Materials Society meetings are both larger than APS.  All three of those societies tend to have conferences filled with talks that are primarily very focused on one small part of a sub-sub-subfield.  So I'm not buying the argument that the historians couldn't do something similar under a big umbrella organization that is merely in charge of logistics of reserving a convention center and collating the programs arranged by subfield organizations.

[temporaryname]

Actually, I think the APS and AHA operate on similar principles. The people on the AHA programming committee are in fact historians, at least.

The difference, I suspect, is scale. The AHA is ridiculously massive. It routinely fills four major conference hotels, plus a large chunk of people saving money by staying in cheaper hotels 20 miles away. The number of panels per time slot runs well into the double digits. And of course the program committee has to sift through many more proposals than actually fit on the program. In "the pit," there are dozens of job applicants huddled together in the waiting area for each half-hour interview slot, and at any given moment there are liable to be just as many hovering in the hallways of the various hotels waiting for their turn to interview with a department that ponied up the money for a suite.

FYI, the APS March Meeting runs about fifty parallel sessions in every time slot with roughly 7,000 papers given over the course of the week with each person limited to at most one contributed paper or poster with a very small number of people also allowed to present an invited talk.  While I don't know if the AHA is larger, the APS March Meeting is not by any means a small operation and it draws an international crowd.  One of the reasons that it is so large is that any one who turns in an abstract by the deadline gets a scheduled slot.  For that reason, in just the past ten years, the number of parallel sessions has ballooned from thirty to fifty. 

The American Chemical Society national meetings and Materials Society meetings are both larger than APS.  All three of those societies tend to have conferences filled with talks that are primarily very focused on one small part of a sub-sub-subfield.  So I'm not buying the argument that the historians couldn't do something similar under a big umbrella organization that is merely in charge of logistics of reserving a convention center and collating the programs arranged by subfield organizations.

I think the problem may, in fact, be (disclaimer: I am not in an AHA, APS, or ACS field) that the AHA is at least somewhat selective in what it accepts, compared to at least the ACS.

The MLA, for example, apportions out a number of slots on the program well in advance to various groups based on what can only generously be described as arcane standards. Then there are various organized sessions, but there are only a limited number of those. As a result, fields like mine, which might have a natural home there but are somewhat marginalized within the organization, get nearly frozen out. (Doesn't matter to me, though, I like the atmosphere at the LSA better.)

[polly_mer]

Actually, I think the APS and AHA operate on similar principles. The people on the AHA programming committee are in fact historians, at least.

The difference, I suspect, is scale. The AHA is ridiculously massive. It routinely fills four major conference hotels, plus a large chunk of people saving money by staying in cheaper hotels 20 miles away. The number of panels per time slot runs well into the double digits. And of course the program committee has to sift through many more proposals than actually fit on the program. In "the pit," there are dozens of job applicants huddled together in the waiting area for each half-hour interview slot, and at any given moment there are liable to be just as many hovering in the hallways of the various hotels waiting for their turn to interview with a department that ponied up the money for a suite.

FYI, the APS March Meeting runs about fifty parallel sessions in every time slot with roughly 7,000 papers given over the course of the week with each person limited to at most one contributed paper or poster with a very small number of people also allowed to present an invited talk.  While I don't know if the AHA is larger, the APS March Meeting is not by any means a small operation and it draws an international crowd.  One of the reasons that it is so large is that any one who turns in an abstract by the deadline gets a scheduled slot.  For that reason, in just the past ten years, the number of parallel sessions has ballooned from thirty to fifty.  

The American Chemical Society national meetings and Materials Society meetings are both larger than APS.  All three of those societies tend to have conferences filled with talks that are primarily very focused on one small part of a sub-sub-subfield.  So I'm not buying the argument that the historians couldn't do something similar under a big umbrella organization that is merely in charge of logistics of reserving a convention center and collating the programs arranged by subfield organizations.

I think the problem may, in fact, be (disclaimer: I am not in an AHA, APS, or ACS field) that the AHA is at least somewhat selective in what it accepts, compared to at least the ACS.

The MLA, for example, apportions out a number of slots on the program well in advance to various groups based on what can only generously be described as arcane standards. Then there are various organized sessions, but there are only a limited number of those. As a result, fields like mine, which might have a natural home there but are somewhat marginalized within the organization, get nearly frozen out. (Doesn't matter to me, though, I like the atmosphere at the LSA better.)

My question is "Why does it have to be that way?"  Being selective for limited publication space makes sense to me.  That's also true in science.  However, surely if an organization can draw thousands of people that will partition into reasonable size groups for panels on esoteric topics, what is the point of putting such strict limits on numbers of sessions?  Surely, the same people who want to present a topic will volunteer to chair the extra panels; the organization has already reserved the convention center and surrounding hotels so that rooms should not be a problem if you start earlier in the day or week and go later.  

I'm still not buying the argument that it couldn't be done because history is soooooo different from other large fields encompassing dozens of sub-sub-subfields that somehow manage to have big conferences with most of the attendees presenting bits of their tiny research interests.

[whiteknight]

Actually, I think the APS and AHA operate on similar principles. The people on the AHA programming committee are in fact historians, at least.

The difference, I suspect, is scale. The AHA is ridiculously massive. It routinely fills four major conference hotels, plus a large chunk of people saving money by staying in cheaper hotels 20 miles away. The number of panels per time slot runs well into the double digits. And of course the program committee has to sift through many more proposals than actually fit on the program. In "the pit," there are dozens of job applicants huddled together in the waiting area for each half-hour interview slot, and at any given moment there are liable to be just as many hovering in the hallways of the various hotels waiting for their turn to interview with a department that ponied up the money for a suite.

FYI, the APS March Meeting runs about fifty parallel sessions in every time slot with roughly 7,000 papers given over the course of the week with each person limited to at most one contributed paper or poster with a very small number of people also allowed to present an invited talk.  While I don't know if the AHA is larger, the APS March Meeting is not by any means a small operation and it draws an international crowd.  One of the reasons that it is so large is that any one who turns in an abstract by the deadline gets a scheduled slot.  For that reason, in just the past ten years, the number of parallel sessions has ballooned from thirty to fifty.  

The American Chemical Society national meetings and Materials Society meetings are both larger than APS.  All three of those societies tend to have conferences filled with talks that are primarily very focused on one small part of a sub-sub-subfield.  So I'm not buying the argument that the historians couldn't do something similar under a big umbrella organization that is merely in charge of logistics of reserving a convention center and collating the programs arranged by subfield organizations.

I think the problem may, in fact, be (disclaimer: I am not in an AHA, APS, or ACS field) that the AHA is at least somewhat selective in what it accepts, compared to at least the ACS.

The MLA, for example, apportions out a number of slots on the program well in advance to various groups based on what can only generously be described as arcane standards. Then there are various organized sessions, but there are only a limited number of those. As a result, fields like mine, which might have a natural home there but are somewhat marginalized within the organization, get nearly frozen out. (Doesn't matter to me, though, I like the atmosphere at the LSA better.)

My question is "Why does it have to be that way?"  Being selective for limited publication space makes sense to me.  That's also true in science.  However, surely if an organization can draw thousands of people that will partition into reasonable size groups for panels on esoteric topics, what is the point of putting such strict limits on numbers of sessions?  Surely, the same people who want to present a topic will volunteer to chair the extra panels; the organization has already reserved the convention center and surrounding hotels so that rooms should not be a problem if you start earlier in the day or week and go later.  

I'm still not buying the argument that it couldn't be done because history is soooooo different from other large fields encompassing dozens of sub-sub-subfields that somehow manage to have big conferences with most of the attendees presenting bits of their tiny research interests.

Two problems:

1. Having so many sessions would require attendees to actually attend panels.

2. The interview process would be severely interrupted.

[t_r_b]

The American Chemical Society national meetings and Materials Society meetings are both larger than APS.  All three of those societies tend to have conferences filled with talks that are primarily very focused on one small part of a sub-sub-subfield.  So I'm not buying the argument that the historians couldn't do something similar under a big umbrella organization that is merely in charge of logistics of reserving a convention center and collating the programs arranged by subfield organizations.

Okay, I concede: it's not a matter of scale.

FWIW, that's basically what the AHA does, but without the subfield organizations. And that's probably just as well: we are already balkanized enough, and while hyperspecialization may make for good research in physics and chemistry, I don't think the same is true for history.

The trouble with the AHA, I think, is that the scholarly content of the meeting is really just an afterthought to the job market mayhem. Sure, lots of people give papers, but I don't know that very many people actually attend and listen to those papers. The main reason for giving an AHA paper is to put on your CV that you gave an AHA paper. I have no doubt that some AHA papers result in worthwhile intellectual cross-fertilization, etc., but I suspect that is less true for the AHA than for more specialized conferences.

It's very hard to imagine what the AHA would be like without the interview circus. Many, many fewer people would attend. Perhaps it would end up being a much more pleasant experience for those who do attend. Many more of them would be able to get funding, either from their own institutions or from the AHA itself. It might become more of a place for real intellectual exchange rather than the full-to-bursting mountain of pent-up stress that it is now.

But that's not going to happen. The AHA will continue to revolve around the pit for a long time to come.

I think the problem may, in fact, be (disclaimer: I am not in an AHA, APS, or ACS field) that the AHA is at least somewhat selective in what it accepts, compared to at least the ACS.

This is an important point. Among other things, if the AHA accepted all paper proposals, many many more people would be able to obtain at least partial reimbursement for their travel expenses. (It would also help if the CFP deadline were less than a year in advance of the conference). In my graduate program, there was funding available to support travel for a paper presentation, but not for an interview (of course, if everyone were presenting, that money would be spread more thinly, but it would still make things easier for many).

On preview: what whiteknight said.

[polly_mer]

I know this has come up before but I remain confused about why people would go to a conference for any purpose other than to give papers, listen to other people give papers, and then spend breakfast, lunch, and dinner with colleagues discussing the presented papers, recently published papers, and what we could do to collaborate on projects related to the papers we have been discussing.

Maybe I and everyone I know professionally just doesn't do conferences right...to the point of having well attended weekend and Friday sessions in tourist spots.

I can only conclude that historians are just weird.

[elsie]

I know this has come up before but I remain confused about why people would go to a conference for any purpose other than to give papers, listen to other people give papers, and then spend breakfast, lunch, and dinner with colleagues discussing the presented papers, recently published papers, and what we could do to collaborate on projects related to the papers we have been discussing.

Maybe I and everyone I know professionally just doesn't do conferences right...to the point of having well attended weekend and Friday sessions in tourist spots.

I can only conclude that historians are just weird.

I would suppose that the historians do just that - at other conferences. It sounds as though AHA has been coopted at some point along the way by the interview aspect, as MLA has to an extent, and the job market has become the conference's reason for being.

[larryc]

I know this has come up before but I remain confused about why people would go to a conference for any purpose other than to give papers, listen to other people give papers, and then spend breakfast, lunch, and dinner with colleagues discussing the presented papers, recently published papers, and what we could do to collaborate on projects related to the papers we have been discussing.

Maybe I and everyone I know professionally just doesn't do conferences right...to the point of having well attended weekend and Friday sessions in tourist spots.

I can only conclude that historians are just weird.

Polly, I can't explain the disciplinary differences either, except to agree that size has something to do with it. Imagine if there were one large "Science" conference for nuclear physicists, mechanical engineers, agronomists, and medical doctors. OK, that is an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

Another item might be that history conferences in general suck because most of us read our papers. Yes, we stand up and take out a sheath of paper and read from it. I don't know why we do this but we do. In 90 cases out of 100 it is boring beyond belief. So if it is a sunny day outside it is easy to decide to ditch the conference.