A
week ago I had just gotten back from LA and the annual meeting of the American
Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS). Last year’s meeting was in
Williamsburg, Virginia, so it’s a bit hard to beat, from a historical
perspective, though Los Angeles has its own charms, including delicious ethnic
food, glittering sky scrapers, funky bookstores, and lots of big city glamour.
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| The famous/infamous Westin Bonaventure hotel. |
Of
course, I don’t really go to ASECS meetings for the glamour—unless you count the
fashion styles of some of our most prominent scholars as “glamour,” which I do.
President Kathleen Wilson gave her presidential address wearing a canary-yellow
confection that would not have been out of place in Megan Draper’s closet on Mad Men, while John Richetti and
Srinivas Aravamudan duked it out sartorially for the title of best-dressed
dandy. I’m still deciding whether pink socks (John) trumps polka dot scarf and
pork pie hat (Srinivas).
Scholarly
fashion aside, this year’s conference was another personal success—and not just
because I both presented a paper and chaired a roundtable, thought that was
part of it. It was my fifth time at the annual meeting, which meant that there
were ever more familiar names and faces to reconnect with, many wonderful folks
from Twitter to finally meet in person, and an even greater sense of scholarly
community to experience. Being the lone eighteenth-centuryist in my department
in Texas, I enjoyed being surrounded by eighteenth-centuryists, even if I don’t
always see eye-to-eye with them all.
My
first ASECS was the meeting in Vancouver, and I still remember how wonderful it
felt to share the first forays into my dissertation project with other people
and get positive feedback. Last week, it still felt good to get positive
feedback on the paper I gave and later on the roundtable I had assembled and
chaired. Validation is an important part of the conference experience: our task
is often a lonely one, and we need conversation and external validation in
order to keep us going.
At
the same time, conferencing also opens our eyes or, less dramatically, simply
reminds us that there are people working in the same time period and perhaps even
on related projects whose approach is diametrically opposed to our own. If you
are like me, and you try to go to a couple of panels every day, then you are
likely to hear papers that seem boring, irrelevant, or even wrong to your personal point of view and
methodology. Those moments are difficult because they remind us that our own
methods and objects of study are not the only ones out there; we are part of a
larger constellation of projects and questions and areas of study that thrives
on difference, not sameness.
Aside
from the more esoteric side of conferencing, there is also a very pragmatic
side. We come to conferences to meet people, not just ideas. I was fortunate
enough to take advantage of the “Speed Mentoring” offered at this year’s
conference, and there I met Kirsten Saxton, who, in about half an hour,
listened to my questions, gave me great advice, and made me feel more confident
about the next step in my career. I thus began my conferencing at ASECS with
the sense of the humanness of conferences. I also ended it that way when I
attended the Women’s Caucus annual luncheon on Saturday.
At
the luncheon, in addition to getting to reconnect with my outside reader and
wonderful mentor Kristina Straub, I simply basked in the sense of being
surrounded by intelligent, capable, friendly, scholarly women, whose presence
reminded me of how central women’s and gender studies is to my work and my
sense of myself as a literary scholar.
My
web of connections had some extra sparkle this year because of the presence of
several people from my doctoral institution, Stony Brook University, including
President Kathleen Wilson. Kathleen has always been a wonderful scholar, but
many people might not also know that she is an incredibly generous friend,
mentor, and colleague.
Before
I get too gushy though, I will finish up my reflections on some of the panels I
attended—and I tried to attend as many as my travel-addled brain could handle. Thursday
I presented on the “Queer Richardson” panel, and it was an excellent set of
papers, if I do say so myself. I spent the afternoon volunteering at the Women’s
Caucus book sale table, which meant getting to chat with various attendees to
who stopped by to take a look at the books for sale, including other SBU Alums,
Devoney Looser and Jenny Frangos.
On
Friday, I attended a panel on the role of missionaries in cultural and
political developments, mostly because a colleague from my home department was
presenting. I ended up learning a lot on a topic that I didn’t know much about,
something I always appreciate. Kathleen’s presidential address on producing
Sheridan’s plays in colonial milieus was fascinating, and I followed it up with
the transgender studies in the eighteenth-century panel. Chris Roulston’s paper
on Anne Lister was tender, reflective, and inspiring.
Saturday
I took the morning off to catch up with some friends; after the Women’s Caucus
luncheon I attended one more session: a workshop run through the “Re-Enlightenment
Labs” project (Cliff Siskin and William Warner) which was interesting in part
because it was a workshop, not a panel or roundtable. Between this “lab” and
earlier discussions at our table at the luncheon, I’ve started thinking about
how we might shake up the “usual” modes of conferencing. Even if the topic of
the “lab” was not something I would have chosen myself, I found the idea of
having a discussion (rather than just listening to others read papers)
fascinating and refreshing.
I
finished out Saturday in LA with a trip to The Last Bookstore and a delicious
tapas dinner with some amazing people. I strolled over to the Walt Disney
Concert hall, shopped for Andy Warhol postcards at the MOCA shop, and tried to
ignore the urine stench in Pershing Square. It seems that the seedier side of
downtown LA is still there, just a few blocks away from the sleek shine of
the Westin Bonaventure and the stately hush of the LA public library.
Although
conferencing is a heady mixture of inspiration, exhilaration, exhaustion and,
at times, disappointment, it always leaves me reinvigorated in the end. I return to my own
little patterns and habits, but my thoughts trace new paths and my research
takes on new meaning.
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| Walt Disney Concert Hall. I had to do a little sight-seeing at least! |
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