Kim Roosevelt will make an apprearance here tomorrow for the inauguration of the Conglomerate Book Club. In the meantime, he is guest blogging at Prawfs and poses the important question: To Sympose or Not to Sympose? (I notice that Ann is also dealing in coined verbs today.)
The comments are already going over there, but most of them are approaching the topic from the standpoint of a reader. Dan Solove offers some advice from the standpoint of the symposer (?):
As for whether to do a symposium, I typically decide based on whether the topic is something I really want to write about and whether the participants are people I'd enjoy being at a conference with. I've participated in a few symposia early on in my career, and I met a number of people in my field I had been wanting to meet. I'm generally pleased with my symposia pieces -- not my best work, but not bad either. I'm glad I participated in the symposia I did.
Today I am attempting to complete a draft of a symposium article -- my third of the summer -- so I feel inspired to add some reflections on this topic. Dan identifies two important considerations:
- Would you "really want to write about" this topic anyway? It took me a few tries to learn that I cannot just whip out an article for a symposium. Perhaps others are capable of doing that, but my symposium pieces usually end up requiring a fairly substantial investment of time, no matter how modest my initial aspiration. As a result, on more than one occasion, I have been stuck cursing my symposium piece for preventing me from working on the piece that I really wanted to write. But if the symposium piece is what you really want to write, have a ball!
- Will you meet some important or interesting people at the symposium? I agree that this is an important consideration, especially for young faculty and especially for young faculty who want to become upwardly mobile. Face-to-face meetings create a connection that is impossible to emulate in the virtual world. Also, having your name on the same issue with Professor Famous can be good for your personal brand.
Dan makes another point that is worth noting. He calls his symposium pieces, "not my best work, but not bad either." I think this is a common attitude among law professors, and it inevitably affects the way scholars approach the reading of symposium pieces. Nevertheless, being somewhat familiar with both Dan and his work, I suspect that the description of his symposium pieces is slightly misleading. In my experience, symposium pieces can represent very high-quality work, but they tend to tackle a narrower range of issues. For example, I have written three symposium pieces on venture capital, each of which was fairly targeted, but my non-symposium piece published last year was quite expansive.
So, how did I end up writing three symposium pieces this summer? I need to give some background to answer that.
Several years ago, I sat down and wrote a personal statement entitled "Research Agenda." I had done this less formally early in my career, but I wanted this document to serve as a guide for future projects. The final product was about five single-spaced pages, and it contained fairly detailed notes on future projects. I still revise the statement regularly to make minor adjustments, but the core projects will last at least a decade, perhaps the rest of my career.
Whenever I receive a conference invitation, I consult my research agenda. If the project will advance one of the items on my agenda, then I start thinking about other considerations, such as the timing or prestige of the conference or whether I would see friends or meet interesting new people. Two of my symposium pieces from this summer are directly connected to items on my research agenda, and the third was the Bloggership Conference, which just sounded like fun.
For me, then, the bottom line is that symposia are valuable in moderation.
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1. Posted by Anon on August 15, 2006 @ 10:07 | Permalink
I would think that the sponsoring journal would be quite important. That is, I assume a young scholar (or any scholar, for that matter) would jump at a chance to put a symposium piece in, for example, a top ten law review. Good for the resume...
2. Posted by Gordon Smith on August 15, 2006 @ 10:52 | Permalink
That's a good point, Anon. My symposia generally have been placed in specialty journals, but a top placement would be a good draw.
3. Posted by Darian Ibrahim on August 15, 2006 @ 10:57 | Permalink
I think an interesting question is when in one's academic career it's possible to write a detailed research agenda that will remain consistent at its core over the next decade (or longer). I assume that for most of us it will be some time -- at least a few years in and probably longer. (This is generally consistent with a recent discussion over at Prawfs: http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2006/08/to_have_a_resea.html.) For example, what I want to write about has changed dramatically after just one year of teaching. And once a particular area or areas within a broad field like corporate law becomes the focus, there's familiarizing yourself with the important literature in that area before it's possible to figure out the best way to expand upon it. Sure you'll have an original idea here or there, and I think it's important to write up those ideas (both to publish and as a learning tool), but to develop a more coherent agenda -- at least one that you still want to stick to years later -- must take longer.
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