{"id":739,"date":"2013-11-28T15:01:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T13:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=739"},"modified":"2013-11-28T15:01:11","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T13:01:11","slug":"an-awkward-moment-at-a-conference-and-how-to-deal-with-it-more-or-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2013\/11\/28\/an-awkward-moment-at-a-conference-and-how-to-deal-with-it-more-or-less\/","title":{"rendered":"AN AWKWARD MOMENT AT A CONFERENCE AND HOW TO DEAL WITH IT (MORE OR LESS) <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I attended a conference and I found myself listening to a paper which dealt exactly with the topic of one of my publications (a chapter in a collective volume, four years old). I\u2019d rather not mention which topic as part of the self-censorship that I must apply here, or risk losing the effect of what I\u2019m going to narrate. I spent the twenty minutes of the communication waiting for the gentleman author to refer to my work, without success. Um, I told myself: do I raise a stink and embarrass everyone? Should I do nothing at all? Two other colleagues from my research group were quite vocal in their criticism of the paper presented, and I decided to keep quiet. <\/p>\n

Mind you, in other occasions I have indeed behaved in a totally obnoxious way \u2013the most spectacular time was after listening to a paper on Alex Garland\u2019s The Beach<\/em>. I had just written an article about it (the one in the volume on the New Puritans I wrote about a few weeks ago), and to my surprise this woman scholar gave a paper ignoring not my article (as it was not published) but all<\/em> the bibliography on Garland. She showed instead in her PowerPoint pictures of scenes in the film adaptation \u2013 \u2018here you can see that…\u2019, \u2018here you can see this….\u2019 I told her as straightforwardly as I could that she should be ashamed of presenting that trash. In more polite but still extremely rude terms (English is quite helpful to do this). I\u2019m not sure whether I lost it or did the right thing. (Others, yes, have been rude to me, but not because I hadn\u2019t done my homework).<\/p>\n

So, going back to my anecdote: when I got home I decided to email the gentleman in question and tell him, this time nicely and politely, about my article, which I attached to my message. Oh, my, I thought \u2013this is awkward but, then, what is the point of not telling a fellow scholar about one\u2019s own bibliography? As it turned out, I got a very friendly reply and discovered, to boot, that the gentleman had even reviewed a book in which I have another article (and had quoted one of my books in his PhD dissertation). The exact circumstances regarding which he had missed my article about his own topic of interest sounded plausible enough. So, yes, another linked formed, networking accomplished, despite what could have been quite a misencounter. Buff, what a relief!!<\/p>\n

To be honest, my main concern as I listened to him deliver his paper was not that he wasn\u2019t quoting me but that, generally speaking, we, Spanish scholars, don\u2019t quote each other. We do produce a mass of work every year but, I don\u2019t know why, we tend to ignore it. Instead, our \u2018work cited\u2019 lists are dominated by the publications of Anglo-American university presses and journals. Perhaps I should say that we do not quote each other, nor anyone else outside these Anglo-American domain (an Italian journal, a Swedish university press book…?). Talk about academic hierarchy.<\/p>\n

So, yes, it can well be that someone in the room in a Spanish conference has published something that overlaps 100% with your topic and you don\u2019t know it. I did check the MLA for my own book chapter and it is not there \u2013whether this is Peter Lang\u2019s fault, I cannot say. What seems to be true is that not all we publish reaches the places where researchers look for secondary sources, which leads me back to one of my pet obsessions: we need to make ourselves visible. It an endless task: maintain a personal web, register in the main research portals, send MLA what is missing in your profile and… wait to be found in that bottomless ocean where so many other voices are drowned. I must be my own publicist on top of being teacher, admin worker and researcher. And it\u2019s very tiring work.<\/p>\n

So: thank you, my new colleague, for your friendly reply. Next time we meet, we\u2019ll have much to discuss and enjoy together.<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them first for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. If you like my blog, you can subscribe using the RSS feed (right-hand column, below Blogroll.) You\u2019ll get an email message for every new post. VISIT MY WEB: http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/a>
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Two weeks ago I attended a conference and I found myself listening to a paper which dealt exactly with the topic of one of my publications (a chapter in a collective volume, four years old). I\u2019d rather not mention which topic as part of the self-censorship that I must apply here, or risk losing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[408],"class_list":["post-739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}