Throughout the post-SBL blogosphere there are critiques and suggestions on how to improve conference presentations. Duane Smith says that boring readings of papers wouldn’t fly in the business community and I’d have to agree with him. He suggests actually knowing your material well enough that you can talk about it with the audience, not just read from a script. Kevin Wilson gives some helpful technical tips such as avoiding the “air quote marks” and vocalizing abbreviations such as i.e. Finally, Chris Heard gives his advice which includes making sure that your conclusions flow from real data and are logically supported (if you think this advice is superfluous, you’ve never heard papers read at the conferences).
I think all of the above posts are very helpful and would be worth your read. Let me just throw in a couple tips of my own:
- Be provocative–the best and most memorable papers that I heard at the conferences were those that caused me to think. Philip Marshall did this with his presentation on the “exceptions” within the Old Testament and Niek Veldhuis got me thinking with his comments on the concept of oral tradition (this was not part of his paper, but in the Q&A time). I think there is a deep sense of fear within the academy of being wrong. This in turn causes people to pick very obscure topics and directly read from their paper. We need to collectively get over this fear. You’re human, you will be wrong sometimes and when you are the guild will still respect you.
- Choose your topics with care for an aural audience–the audience is not reading your paper in the quiet solitude of an office or library, therefore, you need to pick topics that are appropriate for aural audiences who are exposed to your ideas for the first time. There are many ideas that might make perfect dissertations, monographs, or articles but they will never be appropriate for an SBL session. Avoid overly tedious, focused, complex or obscure topics.
- Don’t use SBL as resume padding–If you don’t have an idea or presentation that has potential to spark a beneficial scholarly conversation or clarifies or deepens our understanding of something, then don’t give a presentation. Also, don’t slice up your dissertation into pieces and dribble it out over several SBLs. If your ideas are good they will get published and publications look far better than SBL presentations. SBL is a good forum for testing out your ideas and (hopefully!) receiving knowledgeable feedback–use the opportunity for this purpose.
- Be humble–no one likes hearing an arrogant jerk talk about themselves for half an hour.
- Practice your paper before you give it–if you do this you won’t wind up in a situation in which you have 1 minute left of time but have only presented half your paper; there is really no excuse for this situation except for laziness.
Pingback: Blue Cord » More on How to Give a Paper
Pingback: Giving a conference paper « ×‘×œ×©× ×•×ª
Good points, Charles. In an ideal world, I’d say you’re absolutely on the money.
About the idea of being provocative and only presenting if you have something to say:
Many profs. won’t get funding from their school to attend the meeting unless they are actively participating. So, everyone tries to get something together. You’d think that all the competition would weed the bad eggs out. From what I hear, it does partly. But since most people only have to submit an abstract, sometimes really bad papers (or presenters) get on the schedule.
As for resume padding, schools demand annual reports from their faculty. Having a presentation, especially in a year that has produced little in terms of publication–because the poor prof. is doing six courses, four of which are new!, makes a person look busy. Tenure may also be on the line. Younger scholars have to get out there and gain a reputation. The extra line on the c.v. gives that impression, even if a publication would look better.
The situation is unfortunate, and it creates a lot of anxiety, pressure, and competition. I was lucky this year. I got funding whether I read a paper or not. Conference money was part of my terms of employment for the first four years in my position. I would encourage all younger scholars to ask for conference money, say for two meetings a year, as part of their terms of employment.
Here’s a question off the topic, sort of: What do people think about paper recyclers? I am of the opinion that one should not read the same paper at more than one conference unless the conferences have no overlap in interest. (I’m not talking about invited papers to seminars, etc.) For example, I’ve never read a regional SBL paper at a later national SBL meeting. The odd thing here is that the SBL seems to encourage this kind of thing–look at the regional scholars award benefits. Is the regional meeting a warm-up for the nationals? The overlap issue is a hard one to call, too. I’ve never read a paper at the AOS and then tried to get it on the schedule at SBL because I figure many of the interested persons in the SBL section were probably also at AOS. There might be some overlap, and I don’t want to be a conference hog. Does this seem too restrictive?
Alan, your comments are valid–I guess my critique is better suited to the ideal world that we don’t live in. However, if someone uses SBL as resume or annual report padding, they still should bring a presentation that is beneficial to the attenders.
I would certainly not recycle a paper given in a regional SBL and use it again in the national meeting. I would be more comfortable reading the same paper at two conferences in which I knew the attenders would be different. I don’t think you’re being too restrictive to not read the same paper at both SBL and AOS, I think you’re just being respectful of the audience and the intentions of the meetings.
I agree that the papers should actually try to be interesting; it’s in the scholar’s best interest, even when under pressure to participate or look busy, to present something that shows some creativity and at least a hint of originality.
The reason I asked about recycling is because I heard a colleague say that a title change is all the is really needed to give the same talk at two different conferences (like the regional vs. national AAR/SBL). I was pretty shocked at the suggestion and said so. The person accused me of being too “ethical.” . . . Needless to say, the conversation was a bit disturbing. So I wanted to see if others were playing by the same restrictions that I was using–which I think are quite reasonable.
Finally, I’m sorry we didn’t get together at SBL. Are you going to AOS?
Alan, I haven’t decided whether I’m going to AOS this year if I do we’ll definitely have to get together. I’m sorry also about missing each other at SBL. I ran into Jeff Cooley and he wanted to catch up with you as well…hopefully next year.
I forgot to mention, that is an interesting statement that your colleague said–that scholar will gain a less than desirable reputation if he/she keeps doing that. I think your restrictions are very reasonable and will serve you well in the long run.
As an ethical, unemployed scholar who is conscientious of what his CV looks like, here’s my perspective: In the past 7 years I have presented 10 papers in 7 different venues (SBL-3; AOS-2), and never presented the same paper twice. I have presented papers on different aspects of a broad topic (rooted in my dissertation), but in each case it took a lot of work to craft an oral presentation–quite different from the written original–that would succeed in communicating something useful to the audience. The two papers that were most alike were presented at two different conferences, two years apart.
Pingback: SBL - some information to help you live throught it « Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr.
Pingback: Teaching Biblical Studies Like Steve Jobs « Anumma
Pingback: Reading-from-the-Page in Presentation: Crazy’s Defense « Anumma