Tuesday, April 19, 2011

"The Stars at Night...."


I seem to be starting off each of these posts with an apology lately, so from now on when it has been a while between posts here, just take the apology as read and move on.

It’s crunch time in the Land of Academia, with an historiographical essay, an essay on St. Augustine’s Confessions, the usual homework, exams within 9 days, et cetera (literally “and the rest; the remainder”). First up, though, there’s the Popular Culture and American Culture Association national conference!

Yep, this here blog is being written from the great state of Texas, which Mockingbird and I flew into around noon local time, landing in the truly wonderful city of San Antonio. Everyone who’s been raving to me about the city over the past few months has been proven right, and it looks like things are lining up to be an absolute blast. Oh sure, I have three papers of varying length to work on while I’m here, but that still leaves plenty of hours for conference fun. The main problem facing us now is the sheer number of sessions to choose from. Seriously, Readers Mine, the frakkin’ program comes in at 468 pages in length!

So far I’ve managed to figure out my plan of attack for Wednesday and Thursday, with a few must-see sessions scoped for Friday and Saturday. This week, I’ll get to hear papers on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Fringe, Jack London, H. P. Lovecraft, Civil War photographs, how to get a job out of graduate school, Breaking Bad, and, of course, Joss Whedon. Lots and lots of Whedon as I catch up with some of my favorite folks (who also happen to be some of the smartest people you’ll ever meet) from Slayage, PCA/ACA South, and that’s just a starting point, being the subjects I spent a couple of hours highlighting in my program this evening.

As for my own doings, I’m presenting a paper called “’No Half Measures’: Violentization and Emotional Realism in Breaking Bad” somewhere between 4:45 and 6pm local time on Thursday. One of my fellow panelists is also presenting on Breaking Bad, but as far as I can tell we’re the only two out of some 3000 presenters, which means (hopefully) that we’ve got an opportunity to shine and do some original work. We’ll see. In any event, Mock’ and I are in a kind of academic-geek heaven for the next few days, and are determined to enjoy it. (She is presenting in the same time slot as I am, but a day earlier, a paper entitled “Pryde and Prejudice: the Origins of Buffy in The X-Men,” and believe me when I tell you, she’s done some absolutely incredible work, as usual.)

So, I’ll try and throw up some posts throughout the week, but no promises. There’s much to do here at the Alamo, after all.

1 comment:

  1. I hope you guys greatly enjoy your time together at the geek fest.:-)

    ReplyDelete