{"id":6950,"date":"2008-05-20T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T09:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/20\/for-the-third-o\/"},"modified":"2008-05-20T09:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-20T09:10:00","slug":"for-the-third-o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/20\/for-the-third-o\/","title":{"rendered":"For The Third or Fourth Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 4<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

From today’s IHE<\/i>,
\na piece on
\ndouble-dipping conference presentations<\/a>. This is a practice that has been on
\nmy mind somewhat during this, the most conference-intensive stretch of my
\ncurrent program of study. Of course, the very idea of "double-dipping"
\nresonates with the bucket (or well) model of invention that, at its best, smacks
\nof individualism and zero-sum economics and, at its worst, echoes of such
\nhorrifying social
\n(and professional) improprieties as standing over a vegetable tray at a faculty
\ngathering and using, re-using, and re-re-using the same celery stalk as a salivated
\ndipping stick for that zesty ("Maybe dill?") salad dressing. The views included
\nin the short article range from the cynical to the more generous-spirited.
\nFrom the cynical camp, a shot about dumbfounded graduate students who are
\noblivious to the ethics of reperforming (revising, retooling, redelivering,
\netc.) one’s work:<\/p>\n

As Nelson C. Dometrius, a professor of political science at Texas Tech
\n\tUniversity, writes in his introduction to [the debate featured in PS:
\n\tPolitical Science and Politics<\/i>], when he raised the question with senior
\n\tfaculty members, he received mixed reactions, with people quickly outlining
\n\tspecial cases where they viewed such "double dipping" as justified. When he
\n\tposed the same question to graduate students, Dometrius relates, "the modal
\n\treply was a blank stare — a lack of comprehension that presenting the same
\n\tpaper as many times as you wished would be viewed by anyone as an unusual or
\n\tquestionable practice."<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know whether this says more about Dometrius, about the graduate
\nstudents at Texas Tech (less likely), or about advanced graduate study in
\npolitical science (even less likely), but it’s a take that doesn’t carry all
\nthat well over into my own experience developing and giving conference talks in
\nrecent years. If we are not to be flavor-of-the-week-ademics, isn’t some
\nreturn inevitable? What’s implied here is that carry-over is suspicious, an
\nindication that someone is slacking off or falsifying a work record. <\/p>\n

On a more nuanced note, the exec. director of MLA–who was quoted in the
\narticle–suggests that re-use is smart and appropriate, especially when you take
\naudience into account. If the audience is not the same from conference to
\nconference, the matter of "double-dipping" becomes less a question of
\nconferencing ethics and more a question of growing one’s vita by dubious means
\n(i.e., double-dipping as the HGH of higher ed). I would guess this works
\nvery differently when, for a dissertating graduate student, the list of life’s
\nwork is fairly short and centered on a small number of projects than it would
\naround year six or seven of an assistant professorship, after the chance to give
\nthe dissertation a rest, pour your heart into a couple of different projects,
\nand perhaps even land a book contract. Artificial vita cultivation and re-tread
\nscholarship: who really believes there will not come a day of reckoning for
\nthese practices? <\/p>\n

One of the messages I return to from early in coursework: you can write
\ninsightfully and meaningfully about your work from any point in it, whether you are just beginning
\nto find a research question, whether you have written full articles on the
\nmatter, or whether you have dedicated twenty years to this or that interest.
\nCould this be construed as a kind of one-trick-ponyism? Perhaps. But
\nit is not easy to decide without knowing better the work in question. Of
\ncourse it’s possible to re-use one’s own stuff lazily, but all re-use, all
\n"self-plagiarism," need not fall into that category of suspicion.<\/p>\n

I am tempted to leap to personal anecdotes as a way to wander through this
\nquestion a bit more. Those (i.e., the three of you) who have heard more
\nthan one of my conference papers in recent years will recognize overlaps,
\nrecurring interests, and ideas that re-appear because they click. But I am not
\ngiving the same paper in any two cases. Not exactly. Neither am I
\nwriting what I think of as purely original conference papers, since they all
\nrise from an accumulating slosh of ideas and clusters of interests (providing
\ncopies of them is one measure of verification, but what about those
\nextemporaneous talks?). The conferencing record is like a listing of
\ncousins, not strangers, not siblings (most certainly not twins, which seem to be
\nthe concern of the article). But then again,
\nperhaps I am merely invoking (to the point of abusing?) that graduate student
\nexemption that grants greater leniency to experimentation, to trying ideas and
\npresentational styles on for size, while trudging through all of those
\npre-professional uncertainties. <\/p>\n

I have to stop here, but there are a couple of other matters of interest
\ntouched off by the piece:<\/p>\n