AATSEEL-Wisconsin
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, Wisconsin Chapter

AATSEEL GUIDELINES FOR WRITING ABSTRACTS

An ideal abstract, like a good paper, should identify a problem (linguistic, pedagogical, literary, historical, or cultural) that needs solving, or should present a hypothesis that sheds light on the interpretation of a text or body of texts. (A text need not be strictly "literary" and could include, for example, film or opera, or even painting or music.) A paper may identify a new problem and propose a solution, or may identify a complete or partial solution to an existing problem. Alternatively, a paper might indicate that a generally-held view has unrecognized shortcomings, without necessarily proposing a comprehensive analysis to replace the received wisdom. Some papers, especially in pedagogy, may provide critical descriptions and analyses of existing, innovative, or proposed methods and materials used in teaching languages and literatures. Papers in literature may propose a new analysis of a text, offer a new application of an established critical theory or theories of textual analysis or interpretation, or present a new theory of textual interpretation. It is important to state your methodology or theoretical framework clearly; a reference as brief as "relying on approach X", "applying the principles of Y", "analyzing the problem within a Z framework", or "I am approaching the problem from the point of view of A and B's theory of Q" will suffice.

Naturally, the further your work has progressed, the better your abstract is likely to be. Ideally, you will summarize work that is already completed, but this is not required, or even expected. More likely, you will have the outline of your analysis in mind, but will not have worked out all the details; this is also legitimate. However, if you have merely identified a problem you would like to examine when you get a chance, on which you have not yet conducted any research, it will be difficult to represent it convincingly. The review committees will be given the authority to reject largely hypothetical papers.

Abstracts should be brief and concise, presenting your hypothesis and outlining your plan for defending that hypothesis. Aim for approximately one page, including examples and short, relevant references, which should be used sparingly. The full scholarly apparatus, with footnotes and bibliography, is not necessary for an abstract. (References could include, for example, only the name of the author cited and, if necessary, the title of the work cited in parentheses.) For linguists, data and examples in non-Slavic and non-Western languages should be glossed.