Amelia

At a conference in Mobile. E., a friend from highschool who has her Ph.D. in art history and a tenure track job, invited me to give a paper at her conference session.

I flew down Wed. Since E. is at the host institution she is helping to run things. I've been hanging out with her so we've spent a lot of time at the registration table. This has been a nice way to meet people and pass the time chatting. After Wed. night registration the Pearson reps (textbook sellers) took us out for a nice dinner. My filet mignon was amazing and the creme brulee was also good. We shut the place down.

Had the second night of 4 hours of sleep. We had to get up early for registration. Gave my (mediocre, but finished!, paper) Thursday morning. I love presenting the first full day of the conference rather than the last. E.'s paper was great as was the other woman's in my session. One of E.'s undergrads enjoyed my paper and asked some great questions about how it relates to dada. E. and I went out for Thai food for lunch, then more session and registration time in the afternoon. We were exhausted that night so we got takeout (fried catfish) and watched Top Chef and Project Runway in our pjs.

Mobile is nice, smaller than I thought, and really friendly. At the airport the cab driver, who already had one passenger, told me to get in the cab too and only charged me half the price. The guy was also at the conference, and we chatted. I went to his session on the perils of artistic biography and it was really interesting.

Friday we got to sleep in a little. I decided to miss S.'s talk that started at 8am. Went to a morning session (Veilings, great paper on Roman textiles), then to the official conference lunch. E. and I sneaked out for gelato before heading into a semi-boring session (I was sleepy, we wrote notes to each other). Finished the afternoon with a Rauschenberg session (excellent talk on his Dante series for TIME). We went home to rest for a bit before heading for the reception. They went all out on the catering, lots of southern food: shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, fried pickles, other fried things, also more traditional party food (deviled eggs, fruit, veggies, spinach dip), and cookies displayed in glass cookie jars. Good thing we decided not to go out to dinner beforehand.

The final event of the evening was the keynote address by Joel-Peter Witkin. Often IMO when artists talk generally about their work it reminds me why we need art historians. He did the best thing; he showed his photographs and talked about them. He described the ideas behind the work, gave anecdotes about the shoots (these were the best), and shared some technical info. He was funny! (This is particularly amazing if you know Witkin's work.) His talk was supposed to be an hour. I didn't check my watch, although at one point I thought that it must be getting close to an hour. He spoke for a hour and 45 minutes, and it didn't feel like that at all, he was so engaging.

My freshman seminar (1st class I took in college) was "Offensive Art". We talked about Mapplethorpe, Serrano, etc. Witkin was the only artist from that class that affected me deeply and viscerally. I remember having a hard time looking at his books in the art library, but also not being able to look away. His work is so beautiful and the photos are very rewarding when you spend some time looking closely.

The Witkin talk and spending time with E. are by far the highlights of the trip. Since highschool I see E. maybe once a year (if that) for a few hours. I've forgotten how much we have in common, although being in the same field and coming from the same hometown that shouldn't be too surprising. She's farther ahead in her career than I am so it's been nice to talk to her about work stuff too (also work/wife/future baby "balance"--read sacrifice. E. is tenure track and is working on turning her dissertation into a book, but may end up moving to small town in AL and becoming a doctor's wife. I feel her on the less-than-ideal choices re: tenure track and babies).

Tomorrow E. has to be there at 7:30, but I am sleeping in. Her friend K. will pick me up (K. is super nice, teaching, working on her dissertation, and also plays WoW). I want to go to one session (there is supposed to be a paper on Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I hope that person is still presenting and that the paper is good). Then off to the airport and home.

I'm tired, but good tired :)

I'm here!

( travel details )

You guys I am freaking out. I'm giving this paper in Brighton next week and my presentation is not finished and I am in full-on panic mode.

It's supposed to be 20 minutes so to me that's 10 typed pages. Right now I'm down to 12.25 that I'm pretty sure is coherent and flows. I've reworked it so the stuff I visually dissect in the last third shows up 1st thing at the beginning (for coherency and continuity and so we have something interesting to look at at the start). But still cutting 2 more pages, oh noes. (Although cutting is better than blank page, right? right?)

The panic is bad enough that D. has taken pity on me and is doing some (very brief) last minute translation and (slightly more extensive) last minute scanning as there is no way in hell I'm taking my precious reprints across the ocean out of my apartment.*

Note that everything would have been fine if this wasn't the culmination of my 6-week summer course. I'm giving the final tomorrow, spending tomorrow afternoon grading and then I fly out Saturday night. (Note I'm not giving the paper until Wednesday so I may have some time to refine it once I'm there, I found the European power adapter for the MacBook, thank god, but I'm a little worried that I won't have access to a printer. I'm staying on campus at the University of Sussex, there's got to be printing somewhere, right? I have three days to find it.)

:whimper:


*The paper is on Yugoslav Dada and I'm using my beautiful expensive 300 limited edition reprints of these journals from the 1920s for my source material.

Met with my adviser today. (In his DC apartment, I had the choice of at school yesterday, or apartment today and yesterday was busier. Plus I was curious to see his newly-renovated apartment, lovely period furniture, great art, and a gorgeous kitchen with a ($16000!) backsplash made out of hand-blown glass tile.)

Anyway it was good to catch up (he's off this year) and he's on board with my top 3 dissertation-related priorities for the month (yay!). I think I may actually have figured out what my working process is/what I have to literally do and that's immensely relieving. Now I just have to, you know, do it.

In other news I'm seriously considering getting a tattoo. Seriously enough that I emailed the artist today. I'm not quite at 100% but at 90-95%, it will depend on the specific design she/we come up with.

Crazy diet plan (which is not actually crazy nor a diet, in fact they actively discourage calorie restriction) has a hard-core assignment today. Usual assignments have included: read something and think about it, watch a movie and comment, try a new food/recipe exercise thing, get a massage (I liked this one), etc..

Today we are fasting. Just for one day to make us more aware of our bodies and of internal v. external hunger cues (like food advertising). (They did specify no fasting if you have a medical issue or an eating disorder where fasting may trigger you.) Definitely one of the more challenging ones for me mentally. Right now I'm physically only slightly hungry and trying to distract myself from fixating on, obsessing over thinking about food. I'm drinking lots of tea. We'll see how it goes tonight.

Check out this adorable video gakked from metallian

Blue book exams are intensely correlated with college in my mind. [I have no idea if blue book is one word or two.]

At large state school where I teach we have generic bluebooks and they're not all blue. They come in pretty pastel color like pink, yellow, and green.

At expensive private school where I teach the bluebooks are indeed all blue and on the front they have "[Name of School], Washington DC, Examination Booklet" in big, bold, blue letters.

Of course they have personalized bluebooks. It feels like having personalized napkins at your wedding reception, a nice gesture, but probably money you didn't need to spend.

(I can't remember if we had personalized bluebooks when I was an undergrad. When you're taking the exam who's looking at the front?)

We're having the class on Weimar film tomorrow. I'm excited, should be good.

I'm glad that the library could put the films on electronic reserve so the students can watch them streaming from home. Yay technology. (Boo that I cannot make the technology work on my computer but hopefully that's just because I'm off campus.)

Did you know scifi has free movies?

I recommend The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis. (Not the best version of Metropolis, some minor plot points are changed, but still pretty good.)

Or for the condensed version of Metropolis (or if you have any idea what Metropolis is about) see Madonna's Express Yourself video.

The wedding was fantastic! Really wonderful, I'm so glad I went. It really felt like both of them, relaxed and lots of fun. The ceremony was beautifully set against the mountains and they just seem perfectly matched. Their families were great, I got to catch up with several people I haven't seen in a while, and met some other lovely people as well. The night ended with lots of dancing and then (for me) an hour and a half drive over the mountain back to my aunt and uncle's house.

Special thanks to lightgetsin for lending me her dress which worked very well (I even got a compliment on it). And for lending me a super-awesome shiny dress for next weekend's wedding.

I didn't get a lot of sleep before heading out to catch the bus and then plane home. Yesterday I was sort of useless. I got some sleep and am awake today which is good because it is the 1st day of my 6-week class. We have an 80 min. lecture Monday-Friday. 5 days a week. I hope we all like each other (it's a small class, I think I have 10 students registered). I have about half my lectures prepped (that's about half what I had hoped to have prepped). Wish me luck!

I'm starting to panic a bit about exams. I know some of you know this. Also they've turned on the heat in our building. Even though the heat in our apartment is off since it's 85 degrees outside our apartment is 95 degrees. I can't sleep.

So what do I do when you can't sleep and are worried about exams? Read? Sadly, no. I can't focus that much.

I buy books online. Some of this is reasonable since these are books I should have in my personal library. Some of this is stupid since I can borrow (or have already checked out!) these books for free from the library. But somehow owning them will make me feel more comfortable? Since I don't have to worry about returning them (even though I think my due dates are next May or something.)

On an even more pathetic note, after I spent way too much money ordering books, I emailed my mother with a list of "useful early birthday presents." At least I included more of the pretty exhibition catalogues on her list, because it's nicer to give someone a pretty book than a boring theory book? (and, okay, the lovely illustrated catalogues are way more expensive.)

I think I just spent all my shoe money on books. My brown heels broke last week (the ones that broke earlier and I had the heel reattached. Well this time they broke in the middle of the heel so there's no fixing them.) This means that I cannot wear half my wardrobe until I get a pair of brown work-appropriate shoes. A rare time when I actually need new shoes. But I have little-to-no motivation to go shoe shopping. A stress-induced tragedy of sorts.

At least I'm gaining good spouse credit by taking the 8-noon shift at the bonspiel tomorrow morning so Denis can sleep in a little and be to work on time. Which means I have to get up really soon. Bother.