"We cannot mandate who pays attention, and how they choose to do so, in kairotic professional spaces. What we can do is imagine ways to redesign those spaces so that they include a greater variety of paths toward access" (Price, 2011, p. 128).
Much of the important work of rhetoric and composition, like other academic disciplines, takes place in professional gatherings like conferences and seminars. However, this work exceeds the bounds of formal sessions and meetings and seeps into the behind-the-scenes elements of professional gatherings—the conversations with tablemates or neighbors before presentations start, interactions in the hallway or in the Zoom chat, and group dinners or happy hours.
According to Margaret Price (2011), these interactions all take place within "kairotic spaces," or the "less formal, often unnoticed, areas of academe where knowledge is produced and power is exchanged" (p. 60). These spaces usually have five central features: "real-time unfolding of events"; "impromptu conversation that is required or encouraged"; "in-person contact"; "a strong social element"; and "high stakes" (Price, 2011, p. 60). Importantly, as Price herself noted after her original theorization of the term, the third criterion, "in-person contact," can be more usefully understood as "presence," given that kairotic spaces can unfold digitally (Yergeau et al., 2013). This means that fully remote professional programs like Ohio State's Digital Media and Composition (DMAC) Institute, at which we recently presented Conference Creatures, are no less full of kairotic spaces than mostly in-person conferences.
What's most important about kairotic space for our project, however, is Price's (2011) understanding that "power differentials of all kinds will affect a conference-goer's ability to access and participate in the kairotic 'give and take' spaces of academic conferences" (p. 126). Further, as Price (2024) has elaborated, "the stakes of a situation—that is, the potential for harm or benefit—are always different for different actors" (p. 96). While an invitation to grab drinks with colleagues may not have a significant bearing on a senior scholar's professional trajectory, for example, it may mean everything to a more junior scholar.
Price and many others, including Ada Hubrig and Ruth Osorio (2020), have detailed how kairotic conference spaces often exclude and further marginalize disabled academics. Still more scholars have written about the ways in which white supremacy prevents BIPOC academics from participating in kairotic space. Karen Tellez-Trujillo (2022) recounted just a few ways in which conferences are too often "unwelcoming" to BIPOC attendees, including the use of the Q&A session to engage in "boastful posturing" (p. 9) rather than deep consideration of presenters' work, and a lack of connection to networks that organize things like group dinners, rides, and room-sharing.
Through Conference Creatures, we extend these and other scholars' insightful critiques of professional kairotic spaces to encompass graduate students' and junior scholars' experiences at conferences. For us as graduate students, conferences can be exciting and inspiring, but also anxiety-provoking, confusing, overwhelming, financially taxing, and emotionally draining. Unlike senior scholars with more established academic networks, graduate students may not know anybody at the conferences we attend, limiting our access to group gatherings and informal social connections. Unsure if we belong or if we have what it takes to succeed, we often feel immense pressure to prove ourselves. Further, the unspoken "rules" or norms of conference kairotic spaces are not always apparent to us. These constraints are often compounded, of course, for multiply marginalized graduate students whose experiences rest at the intersections of various systems of oppression.
Conference Creatures emerged from our attempts to enter, move through, and negotiate kairotic space as graduate students. We (Olivia and Hannah) feel very lucky to have each other as "conference buddies," but we recognize that not everyone is so fortunate. As such, we need to think about changes we, as a field, can make to ensure that conference kairotic spaces actively welcome, rather than exclude, differently positioned academics and graduate students. Conference Creatures is one intervention toward this end.
