Yah, it's difficult to hand in all of those papers, apply for travel grants, and get that abstract sent off in time, but not impossible. You just have to know how to manage your time.

Ideally you should start a list of promising Calls for Papers about six months ahead of the busiest months for deadlines - December and June. Start local if you are not a seasoned conference speaker as you are going to need all the time you can get on writing that proposal and preparing your speech. In this case, you should be asking peers and professors if there are any low-profile symposia as your goal is to have the least stressful preparation time. Often your university will have workshops or student-led discussions that can get you started.

One good thing about conferences is that you usually do not have to prepare much more than 10 pages of text for your presentation. Ideally you will have a thesis/chapter all ready to be edited into a concise little package for your abstract; but if it isn't quite ready to be released upon the world, the best way to save time and keep your sanity - and maybe even enjoy your research a bit - is to recycle papers and articles you have been working on but have not published yet. The trick is to find an angle.

So dust off that paper on Mughal floral symbolism from last year that you have been dying to get back to, and look at the CFPs to see if there is any way you can fit it into someone's conference theme. Is there a symposium with a post-colonial bent? Maybe you can connect European collections of Asian art with issues of paternalism. Is there a conference on the decorative arts? Maybe you can discuss floral symbolism in Persian rugs. You should try a few different angles, but they should not be so different and so far from your original subject that you end up tripling your research for the year....

Beginning in August we will be starting our very own CFP and Conference database. Woot! Until then we have a thread on the blog dedicated to your database search faves, and raves. Tell us what you would like to see, functionality, etc.