• You may not chair or moderate a session in which you are a presenter or a discussant.
• All-student panels are not allowed.
• Graduate students organizing sessions must invite at least one senior scholar—defined as a tenured professor, an independent scholar with equivalent accomplishments in the field, or an academic professional, e.g., curator, archivist, librarian—to participate, either as a paper presenter, discussant, or respondent. Please be aware, though, that senior scholars may not sit on a panel with more than two of their current or recent students.
• Paper and session proposals that will not be considered for presentation include: papers that have been published or presented in whole or in part elsewhere and sessions that summarize the proceedings of another conference.
• Sessions may not be organized around recently published books, although they may be structured around arguments and/or methods found in recent scholarly publications. Members interested in promoting their books published in 2023 are encouraged to participate in AJS Honors Its Authors, a special opportunity to celebrate AJS members' publications.
• You are welcome to submit up to two different proposals for any session roles as long as they are not both papers submitted for consideration for a panel, or both papers submitted for consideration for a lightning session. (Note, the session organizer role does not "count" toward the two proposal limit, and session organizer is not a role listed in the program. If a session organizer is participating in the session, during submission they must list themselves both as session organizer and again in a specific participant role.)
• Proposals may not be organized as “memorial sessions,” or sessions dedicated to the memory of a scholar. However, sessions may be organized around any scholar’s academic works and the scholar’s contribution to the academy. Any such submission will be subject to the same criteria as other submissions for evaluation. To host a non-academic memorial evening session, please contact the AJS for assistance.
• All submissions and presentations must be in English.
• Please consult the relevant Proposal Submission Checklist to ensure your proposal is complete
Diversity and inclusiveness are core AJS values. Diversity encourages innovation and creativity, and strengthens the community by harnessing a variety of skills, perspectives, talents, and resources to meet new challenges. We ask that session organizers keep these values in mind as they assemble session participants so that our conference will reflect the diversity in our membership. To help achieve this goal, we have assembled resources for creating successful and diverse conference panels.
In particular, we expect panel submissions to demonstrate:
• Institutional diversity (no more than 2 participants from the same institution)
• A mix of professional roles (graduate students, junior and senior scholars, adjunct faculty, and other professionals working in areas connected to Jewish studies)
Sessions that do not reflect AJS’s commitment to diversity and inclusiveness will be at a significant disadvantage in the review process, and risk being automatically rejected by division chairs or the program committee for not meeting these expectations.
To help inform evaluation decisions, and in reflection of the AJS core values of diversity and inclusion, this year there is an additional optional question to complete during submission. This question will provide an optional space for all individual submitters and session organizers to indicate any underrepresented identities that submitters would like shared with the reviewers.
