The PIC Conference is now over, and I am safely back in GA writing up exams and editing papers. The conference itself seemed to go well from my perspective. It was my first time organizing a conference, and there are changes I would make, but I think it went well regardless.
There are many, many thanks I need to give out:
First of all, a huge thank you to Cecile Lawrence, who was called a conference co-organizer but who actually took on the lion's share of work for the conference. It would have been nothing but a CFP without her tireless work at the conference.
Matt Applegate, who gave me a place to crash, drove me around, picked up Peter Gratton when my flight got canceled, help set up everything, and generally kept me sane and grounded.
Gabriel Piser, who became a tech support person for the conference, with zero warning or official training.
The various PIC students who came, asked questions, moderated panels, and generally helped make the conference run.
Peter Gratton, who was an excellent choice for a keynote. He wrote a very smart address for the conference. He looked over the abstracts accepted before hand, and tailored his address to take up themes from various papers that were given. He helped promote the conference on his blog, in person, and over emails. He came to panels, asked questions, socialized with presenters, and treated everyone in an egalitarian fashion. He was also remarkably nice about all issues concerning payments and what have you. So, think about asking him to keynote at your conferences.
Besides those thank you, I met lots of people I really enjoyed. Glad to meet you (and I hope you know who you are if you are reading my blog). In general, the blogging community was really great in person. Devin Shaw was a delight to meet and hang out with, though he encouraged my drinking more than I should! Ben Woodard gave an excellent presentation, and my only regret was not getting to talk to him more. Dan Barber was remarkably fun to spend time with, and has convinced me to the virtues of the phrase "buying back in" as opposed to "doubling down".
Anyway, now that it is over, I hope to get back to my regularly scheduled blogging. Email if there are important posts I have missed, and also email if I have forgotten to respond to your comments or emails!
Showing posts with label boring stuff about me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boring stuff about me. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Two Links, a Note, and a Video
This blog has been basically on hiatus as March has been rather time intensive for me.
Link 1) The Revolution of Time and the Time of Revolution: A Conference starts tomorrow. I flew out yesterday 9 am, but got stuck over night in Dulles, where I am still am. So, I won't be in until later this evening.
For those who follow the academic blogosphere, there will be many people from that virtual place gathered together actually. Including myself and one-half of Prodigies + Monsters, Peter Gratton is the keynote. Devin Shaw of The Notes Taken, Ben Woodward, David Kishik, Dan Barber of AUFS, and I am sure other people I don't know or have forgotten. It should be a blast.
Link 2)
Eileen Joy just sent me an email telling me that the awesome journal postmedieval has a special issue on the Animal Turn with free pdf and html access through the end of March. So, go look.
Note: That brings me to my note. I thank Eileen Joy for her email because March has been a terrible month for in terms of keeping up with other blogs. So, let me know about the most important posts out there, things I should know about but haven't noticed.
Video: The Kills have a new album coming out. The first single is beyond amazing!
Link 1) The Revolution of Time and the Time of Revolution: A Conference starts tomorrow. I flew out yesterday 9 am, but got stuck over night in Dulles, where I am still am. So, I won't be in until later this evening.
For those who follow the academic blogosphere, there will be many people from that virtual place gathered together actually. Including myself and one-half of Prodigies + Monsters, Peter Gratton is the keynote. Devin Shaw of The Notes Taken, Ben Woodward, David Kishik, Dan Barber of AUFS, and I am sure other people I don't know or have forgotten. It should be a blast.
Link 2)
Eileen Joy just sent me an email telling me that the awesome journal postmedieval has a special issue on the Animal Turn with free pdf and html access through the end of March. So, go look.
Note: That brings me to my note. I thank Eileen Joy for her email because March has been a terrible month for in terms of keeping up with other blogs. So, let me know about the most important posts out there, things I should know about but haven't noticed.
Video: The Kills have a new album coming out. The first single is beyond amazing!
Friday, February 11, 2011
Not sure if I mentioned this before, but...
... I have ridiculously amazing colleagues. If any of you follow this blog, thank you.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Some thoughts on writing the dissertation
You might have noticed that my blogging has fallen off of late. I am still trying to adjust to my new schedule this semester, and blogging has been the first causality. As I organize my life in better ways, I am sure that my blogging will pick up. Now, to the post.
Tim Morton has been doing a series of advice posts on writing the dissertation. You can find them here, and they are worth reading. I wanted to add in some things from a current dissertation writer.
So far, so true from what Tim has been saying. Getting over the idea that you are writing your first book has been the hardest thing for me. Not only has my adviser been telling me this since almost the first day I ever met him (he didn't realize he was my adviser at that time). It also helped reading some dissertations that became books I also read (for reasons that include legitimate academic ones, I read both Jason Wirth's dissertation and Matt Calarco's. I've also read the books they eventually informed. While similar enough to understand their filiation, they were also different enough to really hammer in that these are two different products). With all of that, on some level I still had been thinking of my dissertation as my book-to-be. It was until about a month ago, when the tension between the first part of the dissertation and the second part of the dissertation (for those who are interested in some details, read this) was too much conceptually for me. Not too much for the same dissertation, but two much to be one book. What will almost certainly happen is that the dissertation will provide the framework and raw research for two different book projects, rather than the one.
Another issue of the dissertation is the balance between writing and researching. I'm the sort of scholar who happily spends many hours in archives, who enjoys taking a weekend to track down the origins of a particular phrase, etc. I've always been the sort of intellectual who befriends the small, marginal, asides in work. The dissertation really allows me to wallow in mode. Switching to a writing mode, and at some point ending the perpetual research has been hard. Focus on exactly what the dissertation looks like, and the goals I want to accomplish has been the biggest helps in this regard.
Marketability is the last thing I want to talk about, here. One of the weird things that emerges for anyone who engages in interdisciplinary work is that despite the tendency of your work to often generate excitement among diverse people, is that it is often hard to translate that excitement in proving you are engaged in a disciplinary intellectual adventure. There is a desire, at times, to put your dissertation in a sort of disciplinary drag. I don't have much to say here, I am bad at that. On some level, a dissertation has got to be thought of as a vehicle to help you get a job, and ignoring that seems like a bad idea. On the other hand, the degree of how to do that and in what ways are not something I can speak to.
I should probably take the time to break off a few chapters and try to get them published.
Tim Morton has been doing a series of advice posts on writing the dissertation. You can find them here, and they are worth reading. I wanted to add in some things from a current dissertation writer.
So far, so true from what Tim has been saying. Getting over the idea that you are writing your first book has been the hardest thing for me. Not only has my adviser been telling me this since almost the first day I ever met him (he didn't realize he was my adviser at that time). It also helped reading some dissertations that became books I also read (for reasons that include legitimate academic ones, I read both Jason Wirth's dissertation and Matt Calarco's. I've also read the books they eventually informed. While similar enough to understand their filiation, they were also different enough to really hammer in that these are two different products). With all of that, on some level I still had been thinking of my dissertation as my book-to-be. It was until about a month ago, when the tension between the first part of the dissertation and the second part of the dissertation (for those who are interested in some details, read this) was too much conceptually for me. Not too much for the same dissertation, but two much to be one book. What will almost certainly happen is that the dissertation will provide the framework and raw research for two different book projects, rather than the one.
Another issue of the dissertation is the balance between writing and researching. I'm the sort of scholar who happily spends many hours in archives, who enjoys taking a weekend to track down the origins of a particular phrase, etc. I've always been the sort of intellectual who befriends the small, marginal, asides in work. The dissertation really allows me to wallow in mode. Switching to a writing mode, and at some point ending the perpetual research has been hard. Focus on exactly what the dissertation looks like, and the goals I want to accomplish has been the biggest helps in this regard.
Marketability is the last thing I want to talk about, here. One of the weird things that emerges for anyone who engages in interdisciplinary work is that despite the tendency of your work to often generate excitement among diverse people, is that it is often hard to translate that excitement in proving you are engaged in a disciplinary intellectual adventure. There is a desire, at times, to put your dissertation in a sort of disciplinary drag. I don't have much to say here, I am bad at that. On some level, a dissertation has got to be thought of as a vehicle to help you get a job, and ignoring that seems like a bad idea. On the other hand, the degree of how to do that and in what ways are not something I can speak to.
I should probably take the time to break off a few chapters and try to get them published.
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