Anyone going to MLA this year?
The MLA convention is in Philadelphia again this year, and the prospect of revisiting one of my favorite cities, plus catching up with old friends from grad school and newer friends from the blogo- and Twitter-spheres, was more than I could resist. For those of you who'll also be there, here's some of my provisional schedule (subject, of course, to change at the last minute for any number of reasons, including "Must not miss book exhibit" or "What the hell was I thinking when I decided to go to all those 8:30 a.m. sessions?" or "I hear the siren call of Capogiro's gelato").
On the opening Sunday, the 28th, I'll most likely be at the "Geocriticism: Spatial Practices in Literature" panel. I may go to the "Shakespeare as Theory" panel that evening, but more likely I'll just want to decompress and enjoy being back in the city. On Monday morning, "Locating the Literary in Digital Media" looks promising, as do "Making Meaning: Manuscripts and Material Culture Studies," "Media Studies and the Digital Scholarly Present," and "Book History Matters" that afternoon. Monday evening, I may go to Cole Swensen's poetry reading, or I may just crawl off somewhere and put my feet up. If I have any energy left later in the evening, I'm considering either "Beyond the Author Principle" or "Looking for Whitman," but I'm not betting on it.
On Tuesday, I'll be up bright and early for "Strange Encounters: Meetings between Students and Scholarly Editions in the Twenty-First Century" followed by either "Piracy" or "Between Poetry and Psychoanalysis: Creative Conversations." Tuesday afternoon I'll be torn between "Links and Kinks in the Chain: Collaboration in the Digital Humanities" (hi, Bethany!) and "The Metaphysics of Objects in Early Modern English Literature." Then—assuming I can find people to go with to allay my phobia of social events where I don't know anyone—I'll probably to the GLQ Caucus cash bar, followed "Three Ways of Looking at a New Variorum Winter's Tale," or possibly "Early Elegiac Modes and the Material World."
And on Wednesday, if I'm still in the mood to get up early, I'll be at "Making Research: Collaboration and Change in the Age of Digital Reproduction" first thing in the morning, and then either "Sonnets, Intimacy, and Loss" or "Writing, Walking, and Freedom." And after that I'm going to peel off to the Library Company of Philadelphia or possibly the Rosenbach for a little research on the ongoing anthology/commonplace-book project.
I'm also planning on being at the as-yet-unscheduled Twitter meetup. If any of you want to hang out during the conference, send me an email or say something in the comments and we'll figure something out.
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