I'm sitting in room 300 of the Bingham Humanities building at the U of Louisville. The first block of panels just let out, and there's scholars everywhere, wandering around, eating pastries and making coffee. I'm always interested to see how homey conference get...no august groups of tweed clad New Yorker cartoons, just people in sensible shoes, pecking away at laptops and sipping Maxwell House (which is flippin' everywhere down here...is it a KY company?)
I got here at about 9:30 this morning, after one of the nicest cab rides I've ever had. Not the cheapest, but the cabbie was nice and wouldn't let me tip him after I told him I'm in education - our modest salaries are well known!
I also met the conference coordinator, who(m?) I have been chatting with for a while, so "props" as the kids say, to Shari Gater for being such a big help with the conference registration...lovely lady!
There will be some photos posted later tonight when I get back to the hotel. It's a little too chilly to run around campus taking snapshots, but I did score one or two nice ones of the Rodin reproduction outside one of the buildings.
In about 40 minutes, the next block of conferences will begin, and I plan on attending the "McCarthy and Modernity" panel. Not only am I interested in that period of literature and history, it's a good warm-up for my panel at 1:30, titled "Sex and Death": Re-reading Modernism, E. E. Cummings, and the Erotic", organized by Dr Gillian Huang-Tiller of the E. E. Cummings society. I really look forward to meeting Dr. Huang-Tiller, since my involvement with this conference originally stems from her responding so kindly to a cold-call email I sent about Cummings' erotica. If memory serves, she's the one that invited me to submit my paper, so it's her fault my Jersey accent will be ringing thru the halls of Louisville U :)
The campus itself, from what I've seen, is like a mix of RU-New Brunswick (very pretty old buildings) and my own dear RU-Newark (concrete blocks). This must really be something in the spring, but unfortunately, the chill and the high winds make excursions less attractive.
I'm going to do a bit of shopping at the book tables pretty soon. Hopefully there's a tasty student discount (I still count as such!) since academic publications tend to become expensive rather fast.
After that, I'll post some notes on the McCarthy panel as it unfolds, and then high-tail it to the free grad student lunch at 1:00. Free. Lunch. Oh yes, I'm there!
At 1:30 sharp, I'll be with Dr Huang-Tiller & co., and I get to present first. I went over my paper again this morning, and I have it to about 15 minutes, 17 at the outside. Perfect, perfect, perfect - we're given 20 minutes, and I'd much rather go under than be "that panelist" and go over. There's also a small powerpoint I have to coordinate with my talk. I have misgivings about the necessity of powerpoint, but I find it keeps people's attention, as it's large and shiny. Large and shiny sell, folks.
After my own panel, I'm torn between a few others, so I'll roll some dice and find out how I'll be spending my afternoon. With any luck, there's a local dinner or something, and I'll make some acquaintances to nosh with. If not, it's back to the adorable efficiency in my hotel room to make some soup and noodles.
That's not as lonely as it sounds, really, because I have discovered something wonderful about the hotel: food is cheap. Seriously - 50 cents for a can of soup , another half dollar for a pack of noodles, 75 cents for a can of soda....holy crap! There's a little store-thing in the hotel that runs on the honor system. You go in, get what you need, write down what you bought, and its charged to your bill. Normally, that would be an opportunity for the hotel to put on really wild markups, but this one has things at rather low rates. Yes folks, this gets me excited - saving money and not having to rely on fast food!
Anyway, it's 10:21, so I'm going to go shop and make my way to the panel now.
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