#winston-salem
alright this was probably my last conference as primarily a grad student (with luck it might be the last one where i don’t have my phd yet but i’m not gonna bank on that yet) and i did not expect it to be so interesting
1. gave a paper on Lucan and GoT s08 e03, “The Long Night” which went really well even though (or because??) i didn’t read an essay aloud but planned it like a presentation with notes, not script. met Monica Cyrino who presided over the panel, did a great job with that, was super nice, and gave me and my colleague specific advice for future presentations.
2. noticed a lot of the problems of the field in action: saw a white man quote a Jamaican source with his “bad Jamaican accent” kind of for levity in his paper, heard an award acceptance speech that claimed classics is under fire from cancel culture (also a lot of other really… troubling ideas in there that went lauded instead of challenged), missed a meeting in which reports indicate that white woman tears were shed in response to a proposal that CAMWS adopt an explicit non-discrimination policy for choosing the sites of future meetings.
3. realized how extensive my network is, actually – saw 3 of my undergrad classics profs at the meeting, met up with 1 religion prof in town, tracked down 1 summer school friend, saw in passing one of the Temple profs who taught me everything I know about Homer, met 2 people in person who I know well from pandemic-era zoom events. And in addition to that I made some new friends, some just by mutual connections, some just by the chance of standing near each other in a reception or panel or whatever.
4. did hear a presider excitedly claim that it’s nice to have “emerged victorious from the pandemic” which……. i hold out hope that we didn’t all attend a superspreader event but we probably won’t know that for a few more days.
5. also got to hang out in winston-salem where i went to college and my roommate indulged my nostalgia the whole time, and for that i am endlessly grateful. i love that city so much, like, it’s not without its problems, but it’s actually a nice place to be.
Can you believe a whole year has passed since my 21 Years Working For Youpost? The passage of time is always strange if you’re a comic book reader. If you have twelve issues in front of you, that is one year. Or more likely in today’s market, if you have twenty four issues of the same series in front of you, that is one year gone by. Or, if you like, two graphic novels. Just some thoughts to put…
