[Air-L] Let's talk about AoIR.

[Terri Senft]

Alex,

My objections (which I've already articulated in the past) weren't with the
template, but with the set out on the AoIR 13 Conference page, which laid
at the paper proposal guidelines as follows:

- Description/summary of the work's intellectual merit with respect to its
findings, its relation to extant research and its broader impacts.

- A description of the methodological approach or the theoretical
underpinnings informing the research inquiry.

- Conclusions or discussion of findings.

-------------------------------------------------
Conclusions? Findings? In a paper proposed in January and delivered in
October? You don't need to be a Foucault scholar to understand how that
forecloses all sorts of projects, including ones that are activist,
performance-oriented, involve collaboration with communities in flux, and
so forth.

Last year during a plenary talk for this very organization, I asked when we
would hear from the Roland Barthes of Internet Studies. Under this sort of
structure, I don't even think McLuhan would stand a chance. Thinkers this
interesting just don't even want to play in the "Live Act my Finished
Paper" sandbox.

__________________________________________

Now, to the oft-suggested idea that interesting thinkers take their work to
the preconference/workshop/roundtable/fishbowl/hamster wheel margins: I am
actually okay with this. In fact, I tried it this year.

I begin with the guidelines as stated.

ROUNDTABLE and FISHBOWL PROPOSALS – submit a statement indicating the
nature of the discussion and form of interaction, and listing initial
participants.

Below are the responses I received for a proposal for a roundtable on the
deployment of the term "slut" online, that pulled together a group of
internationally recognized experts on teen sexuality education, global sex
work, anti-racist activism, gaming cultures, and law. Roughly 80 percent of
these individuals had never been to an AoIR conference before.

Comments for the authors
------------------------
Review 1

In theory, a panel on this topic could be quite interesting but there is
only an abstract provided, not a full proposal using the template, and it
says very little about exactly what the panel will contain or its specific
relevance to AOIR - it's just a very underdeveloped proposal.

Review 2

I absolutely feel like a conversation about the role of social media in
framing and negotiating sexual recognition and subjectivity NEEDS to be at
IR14.0. My only concern: the connections between U.S./North American
practices and other(ed) global practices seems tenuous and a bit unclear
through the discussion. I would encourage participants to work on bringing
these ties to the forefront to frame the discussion a bit more clearly.

Review 3

The various phenomena you chose to discuss are very interesting and
significant for various areas; however, I'm concerned that your proposal
still stays on the surface level, focusing on describing the phenomena but
not interpreting them. I'd like to know what sets of theories you are going
to use to frame your discussion, and how you will do that. I'm also
interested in learning how you would approach these phenomena with a
cross-cultural angle. For example, how did you get the cross-cultural data?
What sampling procedures are you going to use here?

_____________

Now, I can see one reviewers mistaking my roundtable submission for a
panel, but two out of three doing that? I'm just so confused, and clearly
so is everyone else.

The bottom line, and what I would really like to know, is whether this is
an organization that is more interested in the margin, or the center? I'm
not sure the answer can be both, and I'm not sure I want that decision made
by ConfTool or whatever it is we are using. Control society and all that.

With love in my heart (really),
Terri


<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>**
*(needs a serious updating)
facebook: www.facebook.com/theresa.senft
twitter: @terrisenft

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