Guidelines: AATSEEL 2007 Annual Meeting (Chicago, IL)

This text summarizes the guidelines for participating in the 2007 AATSEEL Annual Meeting (Chicago, IL). Please see also the Abstract Guidelines. All conference-related information, including the Call for Papers, proposed panels, the Preliminary Program, and abstracts, will be posted there as soon as they become available.

Contact Persons for the 2007 Annual Meeting

Please send all panel and paper proposals (see below) to the appropriate contact person.

To Propose a Panel, Roundtable or Forum.
Any member may propose a panel, roundtable, or forum on materials by submitting a session declaration form (also included in the 2006 program book) to the appropriate contact person. Members are encouraged to propose panels on specific and cohesive themes, which will encourage the panelists to address closely-related issues. Members who propose or organize panels are encouraged to recruit participants for those panels, as chairs have done traditionally. As panel declarations are received they will be posted with the 2007 Call for Papers on the AATSEEL web site.

Note on Panel or Roundtable Descriptions: Chairs are invited to submit brief descriptions of their panels along with the panel declaration. Descriptions are not required, but some chairs have suggested that they might be useful in cases where a panel title alone might not be sufficiently specific. Descriptions will be listed on the web site.

Affiliate Panels: Panels sponsored by AATSEEL affiliates are administered slightly differently from conference panels discussed here. Please follow the guidelines for Affiliates. Members who wish to organize affiliate panels should contact any member of the Program Committee with questions.

To Present a Paper at the Conference
Paper Proposals. Any member may propose a paper either for a specific panel or to the conference as a whole. In either case, members must submit their paper proposal by the deadline to the appropriate Program Committee contact person. A complete paper proposal consists of:

• the author’s contact information (name, affiliation, postal address, phone number and email)
• paper title
• an abstract of no more than approximately 300 words
• desired panel placement
• equipment request (e.g., VCR, overhead projector, etc.)

If a proposal is suitable for more than one division (e.g., linguistic approaches to pedagogical problems), it may be submitted to any appropriate contact person. The opportunity to submit papers to the conference as a whole, rather than only to a specific panel, means that members no longer need to find or create panels for their papers. It also means that members will no longer be closed out of the conference because appropriate panels have either not been proposed or have already filled. When a proposal submitted to the conference as a whole is accepted, the Program Committee assumes responsibility for assigning the submission to an appropriate panel.

Although a member may read no more than one titled paper at the conference (see below), members are permitted to submit more than one proposal, with the understanding that only one will actually be presented at the conference. If you submit more than one proposal, please indicate with your proposals which paper you would prefer to present, should more than one proposal be accepted.

Paper Proposals and Deadlines. All paper proposals must be accompanied by an abstract (see the Guidelines for Preparing Abstracts). Abstracts must be submitted to the appropriate Program Committee contact person by the 15 April or 1 August deadline. Abstracts received by 15 April and not accepted will be returned to the author with suggestions for revision, and authors will be invited to resubmit for the 1 August deadline. Members who do not require early notification of acceptance or the opportunity to revise and resubmit are welcome to bypass the first deadline and submit their paper proposals by 1 August. Please note that the 1 August deadline is firm, and no submissions can be accepted after that date. Authors of paper proposals who are current AATSEEL members should receive notification about the status of their proposals within a month of the abstract deadlines.

Anonymous Peer Review of Abstracts. All paper proposals and abstracts will be refereed anonymously by qualified reviewers selected by the Program Committee, and the criteria for refereeing are described in the Guidelines for Abstracts. Members are invited to nominate themselves or others to serve as referees by contacting any of the Program Committee members. Referees need not be senior scholars, but should have sufficient area knowledge and conference experience to be able to evaluate submissions according to the published guidelines. The purpose of peer review of conference abstracts is not to limit participation, but to encourage all members to submit work that conforms to certain professional standards. All abstracts that conform to the Guidelines and to professional standards are guaranteed acceptance. The guidelines, coupled with the revise-and-resubmit option, are designed to assist members in preparing abstracts, and members are encouraged to contact panel chairs or any member of the Program Committee with questions about the abstract process.

Abstract Book. All accepted abstracts will be collected, published, and distributed together with the program at the conference, in order to provide a permanent record of the conference and to help members decide which papers to attend. Abstracts will also be published on the AATSEEL web site prior to the conference.

Equipment. Any special equipment for presentations (e.g., Audio cassette/CD player, TV/VCR, TV/DVD player, overhead projector, computer projector, screen) should be communicated by the panelist to the Program Committee contact person no later than 1 August. AATSEEL cannot guarantee equipment availability for requests received after the August 1 deadline. Most equipment is provided to participants as part of their conference registration fee. However, presenters who request AATSEEL to provide computer projection equipment will need to pay a $50 equipment surcharge at the time of conference preregistration. A panel or roundtable organizer can request computer projection equipment for a whole session for $120 surcharge. Participants are welcomed to bring their own LCD projectors, although they should remember to request a screen for their presentations.

Fora on Instructional Materials, first introduced in 1996, are the appropriate venue for authors to present and discuss their own textbooks, CD-ROMs, DVD's and other publications. Authors of instructional materials should write to the contact person for pedagogy and fora to secure inclusion in the conference program. Fora on Instructional Materials must be finalized by 1 August 2007, and requests for changes after this date will not be accepted.

Limits to Multiple Participation. A member may appear on the program a maximum of three times. Possibilities for the three appearances include the following:

• once as an author of a titled paper;
• up to twice as a discussant (or once as a discussant and once as a roundtable participant);
• once as a panel chair.

Exceptions to the multiple participation rule are that a) participation in "fora on instructional materials" (see above), a Vision 20/20 session in any capacity, a conference workshop, or as a Distinguished Award Lecturer is not counted toward a member's quota, and b) a member presenting a single-authored paper may also present a co-authored paper, as long as at least one additional co-author is registered and present at the conference (in other words, as long as the second paper results in registration for and attendance at the conference by an additional person).

Participant Attendance. Agreeing to appear in the conference program constitutes an obligation to attend the conference and participate in person. Late withdrawals other than for emergency reasons will be subject to administrative review, and may result in exclusion from future conference programs. Because of the importance of discussion and feedback in the conference, papers will not be read by others for absentee panelists. Accepted papers may be carried over to the next year’s conference at the discretion of the Program Committee Chair.

Panels and Panel Chairs
Handling of "Whole" Panels. Any member may submit a session declaration form and chair a panel or roundtable. Panel chairs or organizers are encouraged to shape their own complete panels and to submit abstracts from all authors in the panel as a group. In that case, the Program Committee will submit the set of abstracts to double-blind peer reviewers as a unit. Referees will consider each abstract on its own merits within the context of the intended panel. Submission of a paper proposal to a panel chair alone does NOT constitute submission to the conference; the abstract author should verify whether the panel organizer/chair intends to submit abstracts as a group to the appropriate Division Head. If the organizer/chair is not submitting the abstracts as a group, the author should submit the abstract directly to the appropriate division head and indicate the name of the proposed panel.

The Program Committee will consult with panel organizers about the composition of panels and will not break up panels shaped by organizers. Underfilled panels may be completed through consultation between the chair and Program Committee. Chairs are encouraged to identify and invite discussants for their panels. Members are not permitted to give papers on panels they chair themselves (Fora on Instructional Materials are an exception to this policy). Because the Program Committee is responsible for placing all submissions appropriately, it is no longer necessary to create a panel just to have a home for one's own paper.

Placement of Abstracts submitted to the Conference As a Whole. Scholars are welcome to submit abstracts for a specific panel (or panels) or to the conference as a whole. The Program Committee will find a panel for every abstract accepted. Undeclared panels created to accommodate papers proposals submitted to the conference as a whole will have chairs appointed or solicited by the Program Committee.

Scheduling of Papers within Panels. Panel chairs should communicate to the Program Committee any requests for changes to the sequencing of papers as published in the Preliminary Conference Program by November 1, 2007. After that date papers should be presented at the conference in the session and in the order in which they are listed in the program.

Chairs have the authority to determine the time allocations of papers within their panels, but the following practice is recommended unless there is a specific reason to do otherwise. As far as is possible, panels will be divided into four half-hour slots, allocated to either four papers or three papers plus discussion (either with or without a discussant). If there are four papers, discussion should follow each paper, and each paper plus discussion should not exceed half an hour. If there are three papers, each paper may take thirty minutes, with all discussion falling in the final half hour. If a paper finishes early, chairs may pause until the next half hour. The purpose of this division is to enable members to move between panels, knowing in advance when specific papers will begin and end.

Uniform Oversight of Program Quality and Structure.
The Program Committee will work together with panel chairs to ensure that all who wish to read a paper and have submitted an acceptable abstract will be able to participate. Whenever possible, the Program Committee will not change panels that have been recruited or organized by chairs, although they will have the authority to move papers from one panel to another, in consultation with the panel chairs, as appropriate to the needs of the conference as a whole.

AATSEEL Membership and Conference Preregistration.
In conformity with AATSEEL's bylaws, all conference participants must be members of AATSEEL in good standing and must preregister for the conference by 30 September 2006. In particular:

1. AATSEEL Membership: Notification of acceptance of abstracts will be sent only to AATSEEL members in good standing.
2. Conference Registration: Conference participants who have not preregistered by 30 September will be deleted from the conference program.
3. Exceptions to Membership Requirement: Non-North-American scholars and non-Slavists may apply to the chair of the Program Committee for exemption from the membership requirement, which will be determined on an individual basis. Please request exemption from the membership requirement when you submit your abstract, so as not to delay acceptance.
4. Exemptions to Conference Registration: Colleagues from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for whom the conference cost would prove a significant financial hardship may apply for exemption from the registration requirement, which will be determined on an individual basis. Please request exemption from the registration requirement when you submit your abstract, so as to avoid being excluded from the program for failure to register. In addition, poets participating in the Poetry Reading who are not Slavists and are not taking part elsewhere in the program are exempt from the conference registration requirement, as well as the AATSEEL membership requirement.