Sooo….. I asked ChatGPT after failing to find the information on Google about two matters. Here we go… I wrote: “I have read an academic book by Christopher Gillie called Characters in English Literature (1965), which has no bibliography. When did it become compulsory for academic books to have a bibliography or a works cited list?”
ChatGPT replied: There is no single date or universal regulation that made it compulsory for academic books to include a bibliography or works cited list. The inclusion of bibliographies evolved as a disciplinary convention rather than a legal or regulatory requirement. Here’s a clearer breakdown:
1. Historical Context: Pre-20th Century: Academic works often referenced sources within the text or footnotes, but bibliographies were not always provided as a separate section.
2. Early-to-Mid 20th Century: The use of formal bibliographies became more common, especially in scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences. However, it still wasn’t universal.
3. By the 1960s: By the time Christopher Gillie’s Characters in English Literature was published in 1965, bibliographies were common but not mandatory, especially in literary studies. Many works of literary criticism at the time, particularly those intended as introductory surveys or popular academic overviews, often omitted formal bibliographies. Instead, references were embedded in footnotes or in-text citations. Gillie’s book appears to be part of the Teach Yourself Books series [MY NOTE: no, it is not, it’s part of Chatto & Windus’s Literary Criticism series], which aimed to make academic subjects accessible to general readers. Such books often prioritized readability over academic rigor, including bibliographic apparatus.
4. Gradual Standardization: From the 1970s onward, academic publishers, universities, and journals increasingly emphasized formal citation standards (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). Graduate theses, dissertations, and peer-reviewed monographs typically required bibliographies by this time. Today, bibliographies are considered essential in academic publishing, both for scholarly integrity and intellectual transparency.
Conclusion: There was no specific year when bibliographies became mandatory. Instead, it was a gradual standardization process throughout the 20th century, heavily influenced by disciplinary norms, institutional expectations, and publishing standards. Gillie’s 1965 book falls into a gray area where it was acceptable but not unusual to omit a formal bibliography, especially in educational or introductory formats.
Sooo…. I asked ChatGPT another question (this would be my twenty-sixth since 2023, not so many). I wrote: “When was the current format of academic conferences become standardized?” The bot replied: The current format of academic conferences—featuring call for papers, peer-reviewed abstracts, scheduled presentations, keynote speakers, and publication of proceedings—developed gradually over the 20th century, with standardization solidifying in the post–World War II period. Here’s a breakdown of how and when this format became standardized:
1. Pre-20th Century Origins: Scientific societies (like the Royal Society in the UK or the American Philosophical Society) held meetings and public lectures as early as the 17th–18th centuries. These were mostly informal, discussion-based gatherings among elite scholars, without formal presentation slots or publication of proceedings as we know them today.
2. Early 20th Century: By the early 1900s, professional academic societies (e.g., the Modern Language Association (MLA) [MY NOTE: founded 1883] or American Historical Association (AHA) [MY NOTE: founded 1884]) were holding annual meetings. These featured multiple speakers, but the structure was still evolving and inconsistent across disciplines. Conferences were often by invitation, and the format of papers varied widely.
3. Post–World War II Standardization (1945–1970s). The modern academic conference structure crystallized after WWII, especially in the U.S. and Europe. Key features like call for papers (CFPs), peer or committee review of abstracts, parallel sessions, conference programs and printed schedules, invited keynote speakers, conference proceedings (especially in sciences and computer science), became common during this period. The rise in higher education and research funding after WWII, especially during the Cold War, fueled the expansion of disciplines and the need for regular, formalized scholarly exchange.
4. 1980s–2000s: Further institutionalization of formats: standard presentation lengths (typically 15–30 minutes), use of PowerPoint or slides, introduction of poster sessions, especially in sciences, growth of international conferences. Professional organizations began issuing formal guidelines for conference organization and paper selection.
5. 21st Century and Digital Shift: The rise of online submissions, digital proceedings, and more recently, virtual or hybrid conferences (accelerated by COVID-19 in 2020). Yet, the core format established in the mid-20th century remains dominant.
Summary: When Did Standardization Happen? The standardized format of academic conferences—structured CFPs, peer-reviewed selections, formal sessions, and published proceedings—became the norm between the 1950s and 1970s, varying slightly by discipline. What we now recognize as the “typical academic conference” has been broadly in place since then.
Now, here’s the carbon footprint of my two queries: “Some of our best estimates are that one query emits around 2 to 3 grams of CO2. That includes the amortised emissions associated with training” (https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-footprint-chatgpt). If you want more details with comparative charts and so son, check https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-bad-for. Both articles are quite optimistic, claiming that although a LLM (Large Language Model) search consumes ten times more energy than a Google search, it’s also more efficient (you might need more than ten Google searches to reach the same results). What is more worrying, let me say, is the water consumption and the carbon footprint left by the facilities were the computer servers are lodged. So, this is why my use of ChatGPT is absolutely minimalistic, in the same way I switch off the lights at home if they are not needed, or recycle the trash religiously. And this is why I wanted to share this with you.
Back to Gillie’s book, what an absolute pleasure to read a true essay instead one of our current academic monographies uglified by the cookie-cutter prose we use. The same applies to the book that I have read after Gillie’s, W.J. Harvey’s Character and the Novel, also published in 1965 and in the same Chatto & Windus collection. Harvey, who uses a bit more bibliography, pushed to the footnotes, does something that amazed me. Disliking very much formalism, the impact of New Criticism and the emerging boom of 1960s structuralism, he refuses to integrate them into the main body of his discussion, inserting instead two appendixes, “The Retreat from Character” and “The Attack on Character,” where he briefly discusses why since Modernism authors have lost the knack of creating memorable characters (they have, haven’t they?) and what can be done to get it back. I certainly wish I could do that, instead of having to mention in the introduction of my future book theorists I have nothing in common with (Seymour Chatman, really?).
Speaking of academic conventions, this time I ask everyone and not just ChatGPT about this other convention: why do we need to encumber introductions or first chapter with a barrage of theorization we don’t care about? Some of the post-1990 books I’m reading have even taken two chapters before starting the discussion that really interests them, which is tedious both for the author and for the readers. This, of course, descends from the ancient humanist convention of citing one’s predecessors to proclaim one’s authority, a rhetorical flourish that scientists have turned into the hated and hateful ‘literature review.’ The problem is that now instead of citing the authorities in our field that we follow, we are expected to discuss both the ones we follow and the ones we don’t, which seems to me a bit of an absurdity because this means you have to cover everything beginning with Aristotle. Perhaps the clever thing to do would be to follow Harvey and insert an appendix: a list of bibliography you don’t want to deal with, accompanied by some quotations. I’m complaining because each rejection of a particular scholar’s work means reading one of their books, which is precious time wasted.
In fact, the uglification of current academic prose has very much to do with the overuse of secondary sources, of which I myself declare myself guilty. I assume you all have the experience of sending an article for review with 30 or 40 secondary sources, only to be asked to insert a couple more. This makes me so anxious that I end up using massive bibliographies to cover all angles, leaving myself less and less room for my own words. I have a nagging inner voice constantly telling me ‘you have missed that absolutely essential source…’. Once, many years ago, I tried to have a real essay, with just a few sources, published in an academic journal, and the rejection was so brutal I’m still reeling. In the journal I co-edit, Hélice, we made room for that kind of essay in a section we call “Miscellaneous,” yet this is not common practice. My need to write essays rather than academic prose is what led me, in fact, to start this blog.
More next week, with no help from AI.