Categories available for CFP submissions:
Here is the current list from http://cfp.english.upenn.edu/
General Announcements
Medieval
Renaissance
Eighteenth Century
Romantic
Victorian
Twentieth Century and Beyond
American
African-American
Theatre
Theory
Cultural Studies and Historical Approaches
Bibliography and History of the Book
Film andTelevision
Gender Studies and Sexuality
Ethnicity and National Identity
Postcolonial
Poetry
Science and Culture
Religion
Travel Writing
Children's Literature
Humanities Computing and the Internet
Rhetoric and Composition
Journals and Collections of Essays (not for conference presentation)
Professional topics (pedagogy, composition, the job market, &c.)
Graduate Conferences
International Conferences (outside North America)
Comments (10)
Zach said
at 9:09 am on Jan 31, 2009
I think this list could be improved. If you look at the current form, you'll often see people submitting the same CFP in 5 or 6 categories because they aren't sure where it best fits. Also, since potential users have to come to the site to find CFPs, multiplying your categories improves your odds of getting eyeballs on your cFP
Dave Lester said
at 12:09 pm on Jan 31, 2009
Great point, Zach. This type of controlled disciplinary description relates some work that Patrick Murray-John (http://www.patrickgmj.net/blog) has been doing. His ontology is likely too complex, but I agree that it's worth reconsidering this list.
David Parry said
at 12:12 pm on Jan 31, 2009
I think actually it is worth expanding the list, I am thinking folksonomy as a classification method not taxonomy. So each CFP can have 5 (?) tags associated with it along with one category. I say 5 to limit so people don't just check all of them, but the five most important. And then by category I think of things that are mutually exclusive, like national conference, regional conference, journal/book, and grad conference.
chutry@... said
at 12:33 pm on Jan 31, 2009
I generally like the folksonomy method, too, with categories such as regional, national, etc. The Penn CFP list seems like an artifact of another era and a pretty discipline-specific depiction of the field. Note, for example, that film and television are listed as a single discipline.
Matt Thomas said
at 1:03 pm on Jan 31, 2009
Another vote of the folksonomy method plus another suggestion: it would be great if users could browse (and submitters could tag) CFPs by location so that people can essentially ask at any given time "What academic stuff is going on within a 100-mile radius of me?" I can't tell you how many conferences I've missed that were taking place more or less in my own backyard that I wished I would have either submitted to or simply attended. This strikes me as an especially important feature for graduate students who may not be able to afford to travel, or who, when they know they're going to be home for the holidays or over the summer or something, could find conferences in their area.
Tanner said
at 2:06 pm on Jan 31, 2009
One issue with the way these CFP lists are organized that I have run into is the tyranny of the notion of "CFP." I chair a film festival that I advertise through UPenn and H-NET and there is never an honest option for advertising a call for film and media submissions. As I write this I am also realizing there's no way for creative projects like literary journals to advertise their need (I ran into this when I edited a literary journal - no reliable place to advertise).
I would like to see an expansion of what the CFP actually is and make this a one stop shop for all kinds of announcements for academic participation.
Brian Croxall said
at 5:48 pm on Jan 31, 2009
I agree that folksonomy is absolutely the right way for this to take place. With an RSS feed for each tag, people can mix and match to get the CFPs that they need.
And we can certainly transmogrify CFP into Tanner's "call for participation."
Amanda French said
at 7:30 pm on Jan 31, 2009
I also vote for folksonomy.
Amanda Watson said
at 11:59 am on Feb 1, 2009
Another vote for folksonomy, especially if one could combine multiple tags like Brian suggests. I'm thinking this would be especially useful for people who work in more than one field. One of the most irritating things about the current CFP site is seeing the same CFPs in different categories, but still having to visit each category to make sure one hasn't missed the non-redundant entries. But I think tagging would also help deduplicate the CFPs -- so that if a given CFP is tagged, say, 19th century and British and Science, someone creating a combined feed for "Science" and "19th Century" won't see it twice. (Assuming we end up with something along the lines of Delicious's RSS feeds, which let you subscribe to combinations of tags.)
chutry@... said
at 6:40 pm on Feb 4, 2009
May be a bit late, but the more general "call for participants" works for me as well.
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