A week or so ago I attended an academic conference. These events bring together various individuals from a field of study who then give presentations, usual on panels of 3-4 people, of work that they are in the process of researching. In the humanities, at least, this work is often a chapter of an upcoming book. Conferences are a great way to see what is coming up in the field, as well as an opportunity to network with others. I was excited about the particular conference in question that I attended because it had to do specifically with the field I am interested in and had a lot of the more prominent names attending it and giving talks.

I attended a full half day of talks consisting of about three separate panels and I must say, after leaving and driving home the realization hit me, I had only understood the argument of one, yes ONE, of the presenters. Everyone else’s arguments fell completelyshort of being intelligible and remained absolutely mystical to me. What perplexes me about academia is that, in response to this complaint of mine, many would simply say – “Well, you didn’t understand it because you don’t know the material well enough.” To me this is exactly the problem with conference presentations! First of all, they are given with the assumption that everyone will have read and understood a certain number of key texts, which, of course, only about 10-20% of attendees in all probability will have read. Secondly, presentations are given in such a way as to not sacrifice one’s own intellectual capital or standing in order to make the presentation easier to understand. This leaves the audience with a speaker who is actually operating in regards to their own ego rather than the audience’s benefit.

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