Conferencing
Most of us are probably nodding along in sympathy to the tune of Rob Weir's scorching denunciation of the mega-conference experience. As always, there are minor points where one might disagree (some of us wind up on connecting flights when we want to fly anywhere) and major ones (we don't distribute conference papers ahead of time because many people don't read them ahead of time--faculty can act an awful lot like undergraduates). Still, though, it's hard to disagree with the overarching argument. The MLA is a dreary, mind-numbing experience, usually alleviated only by whatever city it's in and the book exhibit. Going to conferences does cost too much (I'm reminded of those old Crown Books ads): my last trip to the MLA cost well over $1K, even though I didn't attend the entire conference, and even a smaller regional meeting will cost at least $600-$750 after transportation, hotel, meals, and registration. And the prices do discriminate against graduate students, adjuncts, and younger faculty, especially the first two.
I tend to agree with those who have argued that we need to nix the MLA as a hiring conference, and switch to some combination of phone interviews, Skype (or other teleconferencing mechanism), or on-campus visits only. Perhaps more controversially, I'm also not sure that the rapidly proliferating phenomenon of graduate student conferences is an altogether good idea--and we won't even go into the spread of undergraduate conferences. Too many conference presentations does not necessarily equal a good thing; as one of my U of C professors regularly reminded his students, there needs to be some sort of proportional payoff between presentations and publications. In recent years, I've noticed the phenomenon of job applicants with endless runs of conference presentations, yet no articles. While the world might not need the publications, did it also not need the presentations? Why are we doing this? What do we hope to learn, and to teach?
(For the record: I'm studiously ignoring the Penn CFP list right now.)