JeeLoo Liu, in her capacity as president of the ACPA, recently had an email exchange with Richard Bett of the APA’s Eastern Division, commenting on the fact that although there were many panels on Chinese and comparative philosophy at the recently-concluded conference, none were on the main program (all were sponsored by affiliated groups). Bett replied:
…the Eastern Division Executive Committee (at its annual meeting on December 27) actually discussed the fact that some areas of philosophy tended to be confined to the group program. They would like this to be different. And they suggested that I recommend to anyone in charge of affiliated groups that they encourage people to submit papers in areas such as Chinese philosophy not only to groups in those areas, but also to the main program. Right now we get very few submissions on non-Western topics; but if we started getting significant numbers of such submissions, some of those papers would start appearing on the main program, not just on the group program. For the next meeting the deadline for submitted papers is February 15.
This sounds to me like good advice, even if it’s not the whole answer (since not all main program panels are generated from submitted papets). The 2010 Eastern APA will be in Boston. For what it’s worth, the 2011 Central division’s deadline is June 1, 2010; the 2011 Pacific APA will be held in San Diego, and the deadline for submissions to its main program is Sept. 1, 2010.