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Joint Princeton-Columbia Graduate Student Workshop, |
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Joint Princeton-Columbia Graduate Student Workshop, |
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These sessions will take place on Saturday morning and afternoon, from 9:30am - 12:15pm and 4-6pm. Coffee and tea will be available to groups between 10:30 and 11:30am if group members choose to take a short break during the morning session.
The small group sessions form the core of the workshop. The general idea is to offer an environment for an intensive and productive exchange across disciplines, practical, and theoretical approaches while working around a common theme, as you will already have gathered from the submissions. For this idea to work out it is of utmost importance that you have read all the papers in your small group.
The primary objective of this session is to give and receive detailed feedback on your papers. Another objective, that goes hand in hand with the first, is to listen to your colleagues' comments. This might be more challenging than it sounds right now, but we do come from different disciplines, different cultural and educational backgrounds, and might speak different languages, in more than just one sense.
We hope that we can all agree to take this as an exercise of fair and productive criticism. You might not always agree with your colleague's approach of the subject, especially arguments about the chosen theoretical literature are quick to ensue. But let's try to keep simple denunciations at a minimum. We can all learn a lot from each otherÕs work!
We very much would like to encourage each small group to follow a format practiced, for example, at SSRC dissertation workshops: a discussant will introduce the paper (first 5 min) and coordinate the discussion (approx. 30 min), the author will respond only at the end of her/his allotted time period (for another 10 min), though s/he may also choose to solicit more comments rather than take up time with answers. Faculty mentors have been asked to refrain from commenting on each paper until at least midway into the discussion. Each discussant will be responsible to monitor time and involvement if possible. Short clarifications from the author may be necessary, but should be kept to a minimum
Surely, we cannot enforce this format once the workshop is rolling Š each group will find its own modus operandi. We do think, however, that this format allows for a thorough involvement of everyone and just attention to each participant's work, and thus, once more, strongly recommend it.
Everyone serves as a discussant once. To determine for which paper you will be the discussant, please take a look at the list of members of your small group as listed below and once more on the workshop schedule. You are responsible for introducing the paper belonging to the name listed before your own on the list.
Participants have been divided into five groups based primarily on the topic of research but also with consideration given to discipline, university, and region of interest. Each group also has been assigned a faculty mentor.
Thus, for example, in Group 1 Rachel will introduce Nina's paper, Ulrich will introduce Rachel's paper, etc. The first person on the list will introduce the paper belonging to the last person. Thus, again in Group 1, Nina will introduce Anindya's paper.
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September 27, 2000