just flew in from atlanta, and boy, are my arms tired!
the popular culture association/american culture association's 2006 conference just wrapped up saturday afternoon - 600 panels over 4 days, 6 sessions a day making for 12 hour-days, too, and as much fun as i had, thank god it's over. you wouldn't necessarily assume that theorizing about popular culture (or just listening to people theorize) would be so totally exhausting, but i was feeling wiped out by the third day.
if you've never heard of pca/aca or just don't really know what people do at these things, here's an article on it in the atlanta journal-constitution - they even mention my panel, though not me or my paper directly.
some highlights:
-predictably, the comic book panels i attended ranged from the high literary and brilliant -- 'Sentient Vegetable Claims End is Near!: Alan Moore’s Vision of Apocalypse in Swamp Thing' -- to the ridiculous "fanboy" kind that are better suited to a message board -- 'It’s Not Easy Being Green: An Examination of the Second-Tier Status of the Green Lantern' (which made such brilliant observations as 'he has a weakness' and 'he's only a normal person without his ring' as explanations for his lack of popularity. real deep.)
-i met marcos - who'll be going to the same school as i am in the fall and whose boyfriend went to the same highschool i did - and we went to an atlanta thrashers game. a scalper sold us $52 seats at the back of the lower bowl level for $10 a piece! i also got to see a former high school-mate hit the crossbar on what would have been his first nhl goal. (heh-heh)
-my paper went really well, though someone made an excellent point about its unfounded optimism re: the critical benefits of a plot that's unresolvable, since they could just as well be jerking us around as they are leading us to be more critical viewers. best of all, another person on the panel founded the 'critical studies in television' journal and suggested that i submit my paper.
i might post more thoughts later and as they come to me.
if you've never heard of pca/aca or just don't really know what people do at these things, here's an article on it in the atlanta journal-constitution - they even mention my panel, though not me or my paper directly.
some highlights:
-predictably, the comic book panels i attended ranged from the high literary and brilliant -- 'Sentient Vegetable Claims End is Near!: Alan Moore’s Vision of Apocalypse in Swamp Thing' -- to the ridiculous "fanboy" kind that are better suited to a message board -- 'It’s Not Easy Being Green: An Examination of the Second-Tier Status of the Green Lantern' (which made such brilliant observations as 'he has a weakness' and 'he's only a normal person without his ring' as explanations for his lack of popularity. real deep.)
-i met marcos - who'll be going to the same school as i am in the fall and whose boyfriend went to the same highschool i did - and we went to an atlanta thrashers game. a scalper sold us $52 seats at the back of the lower bowl level for $10 a piece! i also got to see a former high school-mate hit the crossbar on what would have been his first nhl goal. (heh-heh)
-my paper went really well, though someone made an excellent point about its unfounded optimism re: the critical benefits of a plot that's unresolvable, since they could just as well be jerking us around as they are leading us to be more critical viewers. best of all, another person on the panel founded the 'critical studies in television' journal and suggested that i submit my paper.
i might post more thoughts later and as they come to me.