Kalamazoo Startlement

[owlfish]

So... I know I've heard it's fairly easy to have a paper accepted one way or another at the large Medieval Studies Congress at Kalamazoo. If you apply to a special or sponsored session and they pass on your paper, your paper will likely be placed in a general session. There's room for as many people as possible and ludicrously large numbers of people do present. There are usually something like 40 simultaneous sessions at any given moment.

However, I've also hear it takes up to months to hear back from the conference as to whether or no a paper has been accepted, especially for those papers ending up in the General session. Last year, I knew before some of the presenters that their papers had been accepted when I saw their names in the program book. In other words, some people don't find out until January.

I submitted my proposal to a special session via email less than a week ago, on Wednesday. Yesterday, email returned to me which fairly clearly implies that my proposal's been accepted for the session I was after. It sure looks that way! Talk about a fast turnaround time. The funny thing is, it doesn't say it's been accepted. It just says, here's the session abstracts and forms needed to go to the Congress, does everything look good? Give or take the spelling of my name, it does indeed.

Comments

[cliosfolly.livejournal.com]

This is part of what surprised me about Kalamazoo when I attended last year: for one of the biggest, most well-attended conferences about the Middle Ages, it is not as well-organized as it could be. It's as if their assumption, as far as clear communications go, is that you don't need to be told because, of course, you've done this with them before and it's self-evident.

[owlfish]

You would think they could at least manage an en masse form letter saying 'yes, your paper got in, well done' or something like that. Or perhaps it's because every paper gets in and I just didn't know that that they don't bother. On the other hand, looking through the program book when it's published would be a lousy way to find out that your paper didn't arrive by the deadline and was left out.

Congrachatootalutations!

[saffronjan.livejournal.com]

When you think of the size of the conference, and then think of the size of itty bitty WMU at Kalamazoo... I bet they have two overworked grad students trying to organize everything : )

Your submission must have been purdy durned impressive if they got back to you so quickly!

Re: Congrachatootalutations!

[owlfish]

Ahh, but therein I was tricky. I didn't apply directly to the conference and the overworked graduate students. Instead I applied to a special session, which was organized by a nice, small organization which had one person working on nothing except this and one other session. With only 2 sessions to organize, I don't think it took him all that long. Still, I was happily impressed by his turnaround time!

congratulations!!!

[jennybeast.livejournal.com]

I get so excited seeing all the things you are doing!!! Yay! Yay! Yay Hooray!