The Agony Of Chairing A Conference Session

The Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, a professional group to which I belong, did not ask me this year to chair a session at the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Some years they do; some years they do not need the help. I try never to turn down such a request, but I must admit that I am relieved when I am passed over. I find chairing to be a very difficult job that gets more difficult each year.

It is common for each seventy-five minute session at the Congress to have three, or even four, speakers. These speakers are asked to present papers of fifteen to twenty minutes length. It is prudent, in my view, to try to stick to the fifteen minutes if there are four speakers; a longer paper is really a luxury for when one does not have to share time. Ideally, there should be ample time left in order to answer questions and initiate discussion.

Increasingly, I see people roll into sessions with papers that bulge beyond twenty minutes. Speakers often begin with a preamble and pause throughout their papers to provide lengthy asides. Tolerant chairs find it very difficult to interrupt speakers to rush them along. Who are these speakers, anyway? Are they so in love with their own voices that they cannot bear to cede the lectern to others? Are they so lonely, cloistered in small corners of the Canadian academy all year, that they cannot bear to cede the dim spotlight at an academic conference?

Years ago, when I first began to speak at this conference, I was required to submit to my chair a polished version of my paper in advance of the meeting. A chair had a solemn duty, more enjoyable than simply keeping time, and that was to read all the scripts in order to try to tie them together by leading the question and answer period at the end of the session, Of course, if one was dragging to the conference a half-hour script, there was also a chance for the chair to make a preemptive intervention.

Why do we no longer do this? Are we pandering to the stereotypically absent-minded professor who finishes a script on the plane - or in the hotel room? Are we expecting everyone to throw fifteen polished minutes off the cuff? Or are we afraid of asking for such a thing of our speakers, afraid of imposing upon the ivory tower?

Comments

[Craig]

Ha! Those questions. This year, my chair and I shot glances back and forth each time another speaker descended into the depths of jargon. When we got to the questions, it was clear that the ample audience was there for *that* paper. I am getting so old. And one question was exactly as you described: phrased like an unsuccessful proposal.

[Rohan Maitzen]

I didn't realize that there was a time when entire papers had to be submitted in advance. My husband, an analytic philosopher, is always astonished that we can be accepted for a conference presentation on the basis of a proposal alone: in his field you send your whole paper and then it is assigned a formal commentator. I don't know that such a system would guarantee respect for time limits, but it would certainly help--and might also improve the rigor of our papers.

The other great joy of conferences is the Academic Question: "I don't know anything about your text/topic/theory, but let me say a few things about what I've been working on...[time elapsed between 5 minutes and eternity]...This isn't really a question, then, but I wonder if you could comment on what I've just said."