[Air-L] What is a Roundtable, Anyway?

Mon Jun 3 14:38:32 PDT 2013

Hi Terri,

It’s great to have this conversation with you! When I responded your
earlier questions, I didn’t realize it an act of courage -- I see what we
are doing a common academic exchange on a review, :). To clarify, I wrote a
review but not a rejection. Technically, IR reviewers this year only scored
the proposals.

I agree with you about the difference between a roundtable and a panel. I
appreciate learning more about the participants of the proposed roundtable
through email exchanges, and I was happy to learn that this group would be
made up of people other than theorists, who came from India, Iran,
Thailand, and other parts of the world. Your proposal described
participants as “the experts in the areas of girls studies, sexuality
studies, race studies, sex work studies and legal studies,” whom I took as
theorists and scholars, and therefore I asked about the theoretical
frameworks and wondered how the discussion would navigate through different
sets of theories. Indeed I like all kinds of roundtables that are
thought-provoking, inspiring, and productive, including the one you
recommended. In terms of learning in action, I prefer spontaneous
discussions to staged performances, but this is just my personal
preference.

I also like the way you reframed the reviewer questions. As someone who
advocates for localized solutions, I see the questions you suggested are
more tailored to the disciplinary backgrounds of proposal writers in this
case, and therefore more helpful for revision, than the technical questions
I used.  Considering the mentoring purpose, this type of
questions/directions should serve the AOIR community better.

As a reviewer, I wish I had received some sort of reviewer guidelines.
Particularly for people like me who haven’t been to recent IR conferences,
I appreciate getting the vibe that IR favors a “big tent” approach in
advance. I also hope the review criteria are better articulated and are
connected with the mission of AOIR. I like the question of the reviewer’s
familiarity with this topic, but I don’t know how this was weighed in the
final decision process. In your case, I rated my familiarity with the topic
(slut culture) 6 out of 10.

Yes, there is much face-saving going on in more formal scholarly
discussions, and this is why we so hate and love the double-blind review in
academia. I don’t want to romanticize my struggles in this system; however,
before the system changes, I believe that “Dark nights have given me the
dark eyes / Yet I use them to seek light” (Gu Cheng, 1980). For example, I
am happy to learn how to make reviewer’s feedback more helpful for proposal
writers through this discussion. Thank you!

Looking forward to catching up with you in Denver!

Best,

Huatong

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Huatong Sun, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Digital Media Studies
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
University of Washington Tacoma
http://faculty.washington.edu/htsun/

Book: Cross-Cultural Technology Design: Creating Culture-Sensitive
Technology for Local Users
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/cross-cultural-technology-design-9780199744763

On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Terri Senft <tsenft at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Huatong,
>
> First, I want to say THANK YOU for writing your earler email, and sending
> it to the AoIR List. It takes one sort of courage to show one's rejection
> notice to a group. It takes courage of an entirely different order to say,
> "Yeah, that I wrote that rejection," to that same group, especially when
> the rejection is under dispute.
>
> This is the AoIR I know and love: not just intellectually badass, but so
> kind and decent we make other professional organizations look like
> Slytherin House.
>
> I thought about ending my note here, but I am going to say more, for one
> reason only: so that this reviewer-reviewed exchange be available as a case
> study of sorts when AoIR drafts its next set of submission guidelines, and
> trains the next round of reviewers.
>
>
> I think, for me, the big question here is: What precisely do we mean by
> "roundtable"?
>
> A few times now, I've heard people talk about the fact that they don't
> want to see presentations that amount to mere description of phenomena,
> especially stuff that is "hot." I can understand this when it comes to
> evaluating panel proposals, and I agree that on a panel, individual
> presenters should be reasonably expected to make their critical lenses and
> methodological framings explicit.
>
> Although there are disagreements in our group regarding the "findings and
> conclusions" mandates, I think we all agree that to evaluate a panel, one
> needs to get a sense of what thought traditions the presenter is pulling
> from, and how they went about getting the information they are going to be
> analyzing/assessing/commenting on/playing with, etc.
>
>
> However--
>
> I've always thought the  chief question driving assessment of ROUNDTABLES
> shouldn't be, "Are the theories and methods clear?" but rather, "Is this
> conversation being proposed one our organization needs to be having right
> now?
>
> To me, what makes a roundtable different from a panel is the explicit
> tabling of certain formal elements like method (and to some extent
> theoretical framing)for a bit, until discussion is had. This *is not*
> because we can't cook up theory/methods rhetoric to support our inquiry,
> but because we FIRST want to sit in a room and listen to one another.
>
> From my perspective, last year's Other Ethics roundtable was very
> successful precisely because it took this format last year. Respondents
> spoke from experience about their struggles negotiating "border cases" that
> ranged from self-injury, to sexual advances, to IRB fails, to open access
> publishing--the list went on. The common thread that connected us was that
> we *didn't* have clear answers.
>
> Many of the people who participated in that roundtable were on the AoIR
> Ethics Committee, but (from an organizational standpont) what was most
> exciting about that roundtable was that it inspired audience response to
> the point where the Committee got a bunch of new, amazing, committee
> members. To me, this is a successful roundtable.
>
>
> In your note, you state, "I reviewed many cross-cultural studies that
> picked up their sites randomly without justification." As someone who has
> read perhaps one trillion student papers in global media studies, I very
> much feel you on this, and I'm so glad you raised this with my proposal.
>
> In the case of our group, many of my participants, especially those living
> in India, and the one respondent who is Iranian-American living in England,
> were interested in addressing their own experiences--using themselves as
> 'case studies' if you will.  I suppose in terms of method, they'd be
> analyzing their phenomenological and somatic responses to different
> deployments of the term 'slut' within cross-cultural internet exchanges.
> From a theoretical position, we'd be talking standpoint theory, and
> theories of affect. Some of the sex workers (particularly those from
> Thailand) would also  be speaking from experience, albeit in places
> narrated through the voice of a well-known American sex work
> activist/ethnographer with whom they have close working
> relationships.There, we'd be dealing with theories of epistemology, as
> well.
>
> But in the case of a ROUNDTABLE, all this seems red-herringish.Here, it
> seems to me the question is not, "How did you pick your sites/case
> studies/respondents/sample," but rather, "what uniquely qualifies the
> individuals you've named to sit at this roundtable?" Said differently, "How
> will this combination of voices make the conversation qualitatively
> different than some folks who read about this phenomenon last week and want
> to talk it over because it's hot?" In my descriptions, I thought I made the
> credentials of my participants clear but perhaps not. I could definitely
> have done more in that direction.
>
> In fact, an ancillary question worth asking a roundtable proposal might
> be, "Has the proposer demonstrated that the people participating in this
> roundtable have the expertise and/or experience (not the same thing)
> necessary to discuss this phenomena in a compelling light?
>
>  Writing of your own past experiences with marginalization, you explain
> how challenges from those outside your discipline " taught me how to
> negotiate in a milieu of diverse perspectives, learn to be open-minded, and
> not to be offended by the face value of the words; of course it helped me
> improve my project eventually."
>
> Frankly, I think that's more an astonishing testament to you as a person,
> than to the system as it is currently set up. Of course learning can happen
> in set-up you describe, but for most people, *especially* those beyond the
> PhD,  there is just too much face-saving going on in formal panel
> presentations for real out-of-discipline learning to transpire.
>
> In your note to me, you wonder,  "Isn’t one part of the joys of attending
> this kind of interdisciplinary conferences is to have our ideas challenged
> by people who share research interests in similar topics but employ
> different research methodologies?
>
> I  give an emphatic YES, here, but want to suggest something that might
> seem counter-intuitive to many: I know there are benefits to having one's
> rigor called to question in formal panel settings, but I think MORE real
> learning happens in roundtable moments when we willfully enter a discussion
> arena admitting we are at a crossroads in our thinking.
>
> When I deliver my formally constructed,  tightly argued premise to those
> in and outside my discipline, the same old same old happens. HOWEVER, when
> I tell colleagues I am soliciting new ways  to approach a phenomenon with
> which we find myself in struggle, amazing things happen. This is why I
> submit my work to panels (knowledge contribution) and actually attend
> roundtables (learning in action.)
>
> Okay, I think this is more than enough on my end. One last thing, though:
> You and I are *definitely* going to be having drinks at some point in
> Denver.
>
> Everyone is all welcome to join us! I think I'm going to wear a fancy
> dress.
>
> Fondly,
> Terri
>
> --
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>
> <http://goog_689013053/>
>
>
>
>
> --
> <http://goog_689013053>
>
> <http://goog_689013053>
>
> Dr. Theresa M. Senft
> Global Liberal Studies Program
> School of Arts & Sciences
> New York University
> 726 Broadway  NY NY 10003
>
> home: *www.terrisenft.net <http://goog_689013053>**
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