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Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Conference final

Well, the Disability Studies and the University conference rocked.  Fine presentations, fine facilities, much camaraderie, and a lively sense of what to do next.  In the next few weeks I might post my own paper here, but in the meantime I have to rewrite it and make it longer so that I can present it at Columbia the week after next, and maybe at Ohio State in April.  In the meantime I have to give a talk to the Down Syndrome Association of Greater St. Louis.  No, most of the time I’m not this busy travelling; on the contrary, most of the time my life is every bit as boring as I said it was back in my second post to this site.  But this month is an exception.  It’s hard to travel when you’re teaching MWF, anyway, and the tiny turboprops give me backaches, dropsy, psoriasis, vapors, and mossy teeth.

One of these days I want to put together an academic conference that addresses the phenomenon of academic conferences.  It will be called “The Longer Version,” and will be distinguished by three features:  one, every paper will have a respondent who, instead of waiting for the paper to end, will simply snort, harrumph, and blurt “I think not!” at random moments during the paper.  Two, questioners will be required to begin all questions by saying, “this is really more of a comment than a question-- I wonder if you could say more about X,” on the condition that X was either unmentioned in or tangential to the paper itself.  (Questions must be at least three minutes long.) And three, every speaker will be required to answer these questions by saying, “I actually address this question in the longer version of this paper,” regardless of whether there is a longer version or not.  (If the conference proceedings are published, they will consist only of sections of papers that were cut for time during the actual conference.)

Actually, one of the reasons the Disability Studies conference was fun was that the Q and A parts of the conference really were full of Qs and As.  Amazing but true!

Posted by Michael on 03/09 at 05:54 AM
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