Undergraduates see their names in print

By Abbi Philips

"Without the guidance of professors, I'm not sure undergrads would know where to go if we wanted to publish," James Waldinger, BR '01, said. Fortunately for Waldinger, he was given the assistance he needed by anthropology professor Kira Hall as part of her linguistic anthropology seminar during his freshman year. Though the pressure to publish research is highest amongst professors and graduate students, a number of undergraduates at Yale are finding that entering the publishing world can be relatively painless with the help of encouraging professors.

In Waldinger's case, Professor Hall requested that all students submit outlines for their final paper in abstract form. The abstracts were then submitted to the Berkeley Women and Language Conference. Waldinger's paper, "Online Values: Sex in Chat Rooms," was published in a book called Engendering Communication: Proceedings from the Fifth Berkeley Women and Language Conference. "Kira Hall was incredibly helpful," Waldinger said. "First in deciding to submit all our abstracts, and also in spending time with me on the paper both for her class, and afterwards in preparation for the conference."

The sociology department is particularly supportive of undergraduates seeking to publish their work. Joseph Soares, director of undergraduate studies (DUS) in sociology, would like to see more undergraduate work published. "It happens, but not as often as it should," Soares said. Three sociology majors will be published in academic journals this term, and two others are working with Professor Dalton Conley on a joint book project.

To make it easier for undergraduate sociology majors to get published, the department is planning to launch The Yale Journal of Sociology, which will be published twice per year and will showcase several of the department's most outstanding senior essays. "We want to see more of our best undergraduate research essays published," Soares said.

Not everyone agrees with Soares, however. Laura Green, DUS of women's and gender studies, thinks that undergraduates should not be focused on getting work published. "On the whole, I don't think there should be an expectation that undergraduate work will make a contribution to public conversation," Green said. "I think the purpose of an undergraduate liberal arts education is more to absorb than to produce, and I worry about the effect on many when standards get inflated by a few." Comparative Literature Professor Tyrus Miller agreed. "The majority of undergraduates are not writing and researching at the level needed to produce publishable work," he said. "After all, the years of study that graduate students and professors have done really do matter."

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