Fixing 4Cs (IMHO)

As I’ve blogged before, the 2007 4Cs was not a happy one for me. I found the experience alienating (with a few notable exceptions—although I didn’t hook up with all of them, I did make contact with a number of other bloggers at the conference; I thoroughly enjoyed the Bedford party and New York), and I left New York frustrated about the organization and conference.

I haven’t been subtle about my feelings about 4Cs. I’m frustrated enough with the conference to have sworn it off for this year. Instead, I attended the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s Joint Conference in San Francisco. The PCA/ACA conference was a stark contrast to the last 4Cs. Here are my main frustrations with 4Cs:

• a profound lack of respect for teaching institutions evident in the leadership and participants
• an air of pretentiousness in presenters (particularly among graduate students who are presenting papers obviously written for the narrow confines of the graduate seminar and have not revised them one bit to account for the shift in context from seminar to scholarly conference)
• a lack of professionalism among presenters (last year I witnessed one of the leaders of the organization eating an entire meal at the presenters’ table during another panelist’s presentation, and at another panel, one presenter fell asleep during another presenter’s talk)
• a proposal review system that seems to privilege a very narrow set of topics, approaches, and perspectives (read: nothing too “community college focused”)

While the 4Cs seems to be ruled by the frenzy and need-to-impress of the job interviews that typically take place during the conference, the PCA/ACA conference had a laid back (in comparison), yet thoroughly scholarly and academic tone to it. Whereas presenters at 4Cs are often unprofessional, uninspired, and even rude to their co-presenters, every single presentation I attended at PCA/ACA was engaging and the presenter was engaged.

The more I think about the contrasts, the more convinced I am that the intertwining of interviews with 4Cs is responsible for so much of what I don’t like about 4Cs. The pressure for unprepared graduate students to present, even when their material is clearly not ready and they are clearly not ready, must be connected in some way to the fact that so many ABDs are probably interviewing at the conference and their audiences might contain potential interviewers or colleagues.

I wonder, also, if the 4Cs should be restructured. The PCA/ACA conference is organized into several “areas.” Each area has a chair that is responsible for soliciting proposals, working with proposers to develop presentations, and putting together panels that represent a range of topics, approaches, and perspectives. I don’t know how chairs evaluate proposals. I don’t know how many proposals are accepted. What I do know is that the presenters were dynamic and passionate, unlike most of the 4Cs presenters I’ve been audience to in the past few years.

My modest proposal for improving the 4Cs:

• For institutions: Stop using the conference for interviews. Do phone interviews. Figure out ways to do interviews online in chats, IMs, or in Second Life.
• For the organization: Move toward a more visible (I suppose the correct word is “transparent,” but I don’t get that – if something is transparent, it is invisible—but I want to be able to see the apparatus) proposal evaluation process that encourages diversity in topic, approach, and perspective.
• For the organization and institutions: Bring the passion back. Create an apparatus to mentor or coach presenters (either at the organization level or at the graduate program level) and weed out presentations that are unrevised seminar papers.
• For presenters: Be respectful of other presenters. Function as part of a panel, for crying out loud. Don’t roll your eyes, sleep, or eat while waiting for your chance to talk. Be a good colleague and engage with your other panelists.

I’m not suggesting that the PCA/ACA has it all figured out. I heard some rumbling about double submissions being an issue with their current system and apparently some Area Chairs pressure presenters to attend all the other presentations in their area. But perhaps the Cs could learn a thing or two from the PCA/ACA.

tags: academia  cccc  composition  conference  

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