Now that I'm back from the AALS Annual Meeting, I remember what I liked about going in years past (seeing old friends; making new ones) and what I didn't (a lot of puffery and jockeying for status).* But the topper this year was the indiscriminate use of the word "scholar," as in "I'm a scholar of ______."
I'm comfortable with people self-identifying as professors (after all, that's our title), or saying that their area of study is X, or suggesting that they're focusing on X. I love hearing what someone's researching, just as much as I love hearing about what that person's doing in terms of teaching (or, for that matter, his or her hobbies). And I love batting around ideas just as much as the next person. I got some great suggestions about some of my projects from friends at the conference.
But saying "I'm a scholar"? Um, that's something that the person reading the scholarship gets to decide.
Why is it that I think that we can call what we do "producing scholarship," but that referring to ourselves as scholars is a bad idea?
Answer #1: It's pretentious.
Answer #2: Just as you can't make something "interesting" by declaring it thus, you can't be a scholar just because you're writing something in a particular area. Trust me: the best scholars don't toot their own horns that way. Some of the most amazing folks in academia are jaw-droppingly modest. Let your readers decide how good your work is--not you.
Just sayin.'
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* I seriously went through Faculty Recruitment Conference flashbacks when I checked into the hotel this year--and my own FRC experience was way back in 1991.
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