Last week while at the SBL, I wrote on things to avoid in a scholarly paper. It has generated some nice comments and has floated around the biblioblogosphere. Chris Heard at Higgaion and Charles Halton at Awilum picked up on the idea and added some points.

My favorite piece of advice is Chris Heard’s dictum that presenters should bring enough copies of handouts. More than half the papers that used handouts had to apologize for not bringing enough. This happens every year. It is not that expensive to print copies, especially since most of us can just slap it on the department copier and hit the copy button. Even if your department doesn’t cover the cost, do us all a favor and spring for the extra couple of dollars. Here is the breakdown of your expenses:

  • Flight to the conference – $400
  • Hotel room – $550
  • Annual meeting registration – $135
  • Having enough copies for your presentation – Priceless (or $2.25)

I hate it when we are told we have to share sheets with another scholar. After all, you don’t know where some of these guys have been (I mean, some of them could have gone to safety schools). So, I am always stuck in a pickle: do I let the other guy have the handout and risk not understanding the paper (thereby wasting a trip to San Diego) or do I keep the paper and risk the irony of being selfish at a biblical studies conference.

By the way, I am watching the Baltimore vs. San Diego game, and they just showed a shot of the city that showed my hotel and the convention center. I’m still enough of a hick that I find things like that cool, but I’m still rooting for Baltimore.

Duane Smith at Abnormal Interests also posted on the topic. He argues that scholars should present their papers instead of reading them. I’m not sure I agree with him. His point that we don’t read from lectures in class is well taken, but in those cases we are talking about things that we know very well and have spoken about many times. In papers, however, we are presenting new information and we are usually giving rather detailed arguments. In class we can gloss over those details, but not at conferences. I think the nature of the paper is different enough that they need to be read in most cases.

Of course, part of my hesitation to endorse this idea stems from my suspicion that there are very few scholars out there who could give a paper well without reading it. Papers can be boring when read, but the alternative could be much worse.

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