Back From APSA

I am severely sleep deprived at the moment. The new rule is that there will be no in-law visits immediately following long conferences that involve travel and stress. I'm going to do a quick run-down of APSA conference and then run off to bed, but things will go into high gear at Apt. 11D and two other blogs this week.

1) Most of the panels that I attended had very low attendance. I'm not sure what the hot topics were this year. It certainly wasn't education politics – only two papers on that this year, and they were jammed in on urban politics panel. Even the new media panels which are usually hot topics didn't have crowds. My panel had about 40 in the room, which was respectable, but I've had double that in previous years. 

2) I didn't see a single paper that I thought would be of interest to a mainstream audience. Usually there's one or two that I'll mention to Steve when I get home. This year, nada. One paper was so complicated that the discussant said that she couldn't make heads or tails of it. I actually enjoyed that paper, but it would be a challenge to translate the findings to a general audience.

3) Despite the fact that several speakers mentioned the need for more qualitative research, nearly all of the papers that I saw were quantitative in nature. I have just some very vague and unspecific comments on that quantitative research. Quantitative research must pass the bull shit test; the findings must square with common sense. If you only look at the numbers and don't actually care about your subject, then you're going to ask bad questions about your subject.

4) The crappy job market came up a lot at this conference and over the weekend with other academics. 50 percent of those friends without jobs or with undesirable jobs are walking away from academia entirely. The other 50% are doubling down and giving it another year.

5) I ate some really fabulous food in Toronto and reconnected with old friends that I first met two or three boyfriends before our current spouses. Much love to Toni, Dorinda, Tracy, Jill, and Anne K. I had dinner with family, including my 97 year old great Aunt Edna who still has all her marbles and plays online bingo. I ran into Drezner, Russell, and Henry. 

6) Further commentary from Marc Lynch, Russell Arben Fox, and Dan Drezner.

So, all in all, it was a good though somewhat disappointing trip. I didn't come back home with a sense of what the next hot idea would be. There were no common themes or ideas. No papers that would make good blog posts. There were lots of cranky comments and some incivility — maybe more than usual. But I did come back with a very clear writing plan for this fall.