Pieces on Our Craft: The Academic Conference: An Irreverent Glossary of Terms

Abstract

The annual meeting of the International Studies Association, like other major academic conferences, is a time-honored tradition. As it might be an overwhelming experience for the uninitiated, I have compiled a list of key conference terms and their definitions. The common areas of the conference—lounges, bars, and hallways—create vast open spaces for “trolling,” the practice by which conference goers plant themselves in heavily trafficked areas in an attempt to entrap those of higher rank on the academic food chain, as they walk by. Successful trollers are always poised to “trade up”— dropping smaller fish for a bigger one. Consequently, they must hold conversations while scanning for fresh prey, with eyes that swivel like surveillance cameras. The danger for trollers is that they might unintentionally snag “trash fish”—graduate school classmates who are still looking for their big break (or, worse still, positions at the troller’s university), nobodies who want to follow up on a point from the troller’s panel, or graduate students under the mistaken impression that the troller is a somebody in the fi eld. Another danger is that a troller will snag a higher-ranked troller who is also on the prowl. Seasoned trollers know that they can only hold someone on the line for so long before it is jerked by a trash fish allowing the big fish to wiggle loose. To practice their craft, trollers must carefully choose their hunting spots. Promising locations include the bottoms of escalators where the unwary can be netted easily as they descend and badges come into view fi rst so that time is not wasted on facial recognition. The best at their craft know that the prime place to snare luminaries is after their panel presentations when they are without their natural defense mechanism—a protective layer of co-authors and graduate students.