| Give
a Paper |
| Think before you jump |
Writing
a decent paper for presentation takes a lot of time. Weigh carefully
whether you want to spend your time writing a presentation or an
article. In my opinion--and, I think, that of many others--an
article that appears in a peer-reviewed journal is worth far more
than a paper presented to ... just about anyone, really. |
| Venue |
I
hear sometimes that an invited paper carries more weight (among
administrators) than one that has undergone peer-review, i.e. one
for which a presenter must first submit an abstract to a panel of
reviewers. I do not know how true this is, or where, but in my opinion
peer-review is almost always to be preferred.
Abstracts:
take these seriously. An abstract--like the presentation itself--should
present a puzzle to which you propose a solution; it should show
engagement with the relevant scholarship and sufficient details
to allow a reader to assess the strength of your argument. The following
abstracts of mine were accepted for presentation at the APA in 1997
| 1998 | 2002
| 2005. They are imperfect,
but were sufficient; you do better. |
| Writing |
Reading
and listening, writing and speaking, are different ballgames. It
is in general a bad idea simply to edit down a written
paper for oral presentation. Some arguments are better
suited to written presentation. There are some things that an audience
just cannot listen to.
In my opinion
a paper should articulate a problem and propose to solve it. It
should not simply "survey evidence", "raise questions",
"discuss issues"; do these things in a seminar, for a
workshop, around the lunch table. A paper should have a clear thesis
and a straightforward argument in its support. Its goal is the same
as that of a written article. Here is a paper
that I delivered at the APA meeting in 2005. |
| Delivering |
My
wife once told me to practice delivering a paper as many times as
it is minutes long; read a 20-minute paper 20 times. This advice
has never failed me (though it is better suited to papers of 20
minutes than 50). You should be so familiar with your paper that
you can read it without having to look at the page the whole time,
so familiar with the argument that you can depart often from the
precise wording without disrupting the flow, logic, rhetoric, or
timing.
Tone, volume,
and speed are your friends. Just as the writer is obliged to keep
the reader interested and engaged with the argument through clear
and compelling prose, so also the speaker must perform the words
with the same goal in mind. This is not frivolous. Flat speech is
as useless as bad prose. No one will want to listen if you sound
bored, harried, vel sim.
Respect the time-limit.
If you have 15 minutes, use 15. Never go over. An "hour-long"
talk should, in my opinion, last no more than 50 minutes. Most audiences
cannot endure more. |
| Handouts |
A
handout is a two-edged sword. If your audience is looking down and
reading a piece of paper, it is not looking at you and hearing your
argument. Use handouts only where they are necessary. Your argument
should be so clear that a listener does not need a piece of paper
in order to follow you. If you must use a handout I would urge you
to restrict its length to one piece of paper. |
| Q&A |
In
many settings, the Q&A are as important as the talk. Try to
imagine in advance the 10 hardest questions that someone in the
audience might ask--not just so that you may be prepared to answer
them, but because this often helps one to find weak spots in the
argument and firm them up. Humility is fine, but be careful not
to let this slide into self-deprecation. Tell the audience that
you are dumb and it will conclude that you are dumb. Be confident
enough in your argument that you can be confident in answering questions
about it. |
| Publishing |
Published proceedings of private conferences seem to be growing in
number. I would urge against publishing in such volumes until you
have a good number of peer-reviewed publications to your name. It
is my impression that such collections tend not to undergo the same
rigorous peer-review that journal submissions do. If you have given
a great paper at a conference devoted to kai in Pindar, why not publish
a written version in a journal? Peer-review is your friend. More details
on publishing. |
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