Has anyone gone to a conference lately? I presented at the New England Medieval Studies Consortium grad student conference (I know, it’s a mouthful) at the beginning of March. It was held at Brown, so I got to check out Providence. (I have to say, I wasn’t really taken with it.) There were more historians and art historians than literature folks at the conference with the result that I came away realizing I know nothing about the Middle Ages. Always a good feeling. Conferences are such strange things. Everyone’s sharing papers on really specific topics–sometimes interesting, sometimes not–so most of the time no one else in the room has more than a limited knowledge of the subject matter.
I acquired a fair bit of presentation experience while at BYU, so I should have known better, but I still over-prepared for the question and answer session. My paper was about Piers Plowman and Inception (dreams within dreams, uncertainty about dreams’ significance, the dreamer’s potential for madness, etc.), so I was expecting all sorts of queries about medieval dream books, literary dreams, dream theory, and so forth. Most medievalists have something to say about dreams. Perhaps the problem was the dearth of literary scholars, but I only got one banal question about the reliability of the narrator. I guess I shouldn’t complain; it’s better than being thrown a question I have no idea how to answer, and the extra research I did won’t go to waste.
Does anyone else ever feel like what they’re doing is of no real significance?
karobison
DLewis
Jeremy
bdbascom
Katie: In response to your final question: a yelping, limping at times, “yes”.
Conferences are hit and miss, with panels more misses than hits, and papers amplifying this trajectory. I _do_ think they can be quite important not only for networking and resume building, but for actual idea exchange. However, I’ve rarely seen this occur, but it does. Nevertheless, effective networking remains for me not only a challenge but also the saving grace of academia. It gives us a chance to get out of our institutions, attempt to build communities of responsibility and exchange, while also challenging us to articulate our claims such that an interlocutor can carve out a space for themselves with/counter to us.
I congratulate you on preparing well. I’ve myself been the person scrambling the night before, but I’ve also seen much worse. The more prepared we are for conferences the better. However, that doesn’t mean that our panel- companions will have prepared well or even care how the panel coheres (if it does)– who we present with can make a huge difference (just as you suggested our audience does).
Also, your topic sounds neat! I’d love to hear you riff on medieval dream books and dream theory.
Anyhow, I am sure that the things you are interested in will find an audience. Don’t be discouraged. And, you probably know way more than you think you do.
For my Middle English course last semester, I threw in a throw-away joke about “Inception” in a seminar paper I wrote on Chaucer’s Prolgoue to “Legend of Good Women.” What is it about Inception and medieval lit? It does seem like the “dream within a dream” frame died off with that period.
I like what Kaila said. If we based our professional value on conferences, I think we all would be in a state of crisis–from what I can tell, no one is intellectually excited by conferences (I actually like them, sometimes). I think they really are all about networking–which is too bad for me, because I’m clueless in those types of social situations. My very first (and only) professional conference, I spent a lot of the time between sessions wandering the halls and arriving unfashionably early to unpopular panels. I did meet some people, but by no help of my own.
But I feel your final question. I find myself coming back to it often. It comes in vague thoughts on the public humanities, professionalization, my relationship with theory, etc., etc. I wish I had something more profound to say on the topic, but I don’t. Just trying to figure things out slowly, very slowly.
Dalin,
Your comments are quite sobering. You’ve held out with confidence and frank acceptance of the academy in times past ( even with it’s dirty laundry). Have you any new thoughts? That is, I’m inviting you to (if you want) expand upon what those last few sentences meant. Or you could just specify the three phrases, ” public humanities,” “professionalization” and “your relationship to theory”. I hope I’m not sounding like I am pigeonholing you, but rather I’m intending to convey my sincere interest/investment in how you’ve used these terms and how you are ‘nuancing’ your relationship to their vague claim upon us.
and by Dalin– I meant “Dallin”. My apologies. I typed that rather quickly.
We’re all alive! Well, that is, everyone but Jeremy. Anyone heard anything from him lately?
Conferences scare me. I’ve never been to one with huge stakes, but I always fear that I’m going to fumble while speaking. In a conference here my respondent was this modernist bigwig (who has since moved to SUNY Buffalo) and I about crapped my pants. It turns out he probably didn’t read my paper. And I was far too inarticulate to make my paper make sense.
Anyway, I’m really not being too hard on myself. I don’t speak well when I’m reading in public. I tend to either affect a dramatic persona, or rush through the text because I hate the experience. Any suggestions?