Day Two: In which I give my paper!

Yes, today was the big day -- my first paper delivered at a conference, ever. How did it go? Did I freeze up? Was I booed away from the podium? Did I trip over a power cord? Was I raked over the coals in the Q&A session afterwards?

The answer to all those questions is, thankfully, no. However, let me pose some others: did I leave the only hard copy I had of my paper and presentation notes on the plane? Did I fail to realize this until the night before I was scheduled to speak? The answer to those two is, unfortunately, yes.

Thankfully, technology was there to save the day. My pretty little apple laptop did thankfully have a copy of my paper, although it was missing all the notes I had made for myself. So: to anyone to whom I sent a brief-bordering-on-curt email instead of a loving, detail-filled one, you now know why: I was busy emptying my suitcase in a frenzy, then re-typing all my notes until late that night. I felt pretty silly, but in the end it wound up not being a huge deal at all. If anything, it was helpful, because it gave me something to do with my hands while I spoke (viz, scroll) rather than (a) rustle papers, indicating to the audience how badly my hands were shaking, or (b) gesticulate wildly, distracting everyone from the substance of my paper. It also helped me to avoid being thrown off by the "10 minutes" "5 minutes" and "wrap up" placards that the moderator helpfully flashed to keep all the participants on-schedule.

Note the rim of my little computer peeking over the edge in this shot

This is how I opened my talk:

I’d like to begin by thanking the conference organizers, and the other participants, for the wonderful and stimulating discussion we’ve had so far. I am honored to be able to present my work in front of such a diverse group of scholars from all over the academic -- and global -- map.
I also have to ask for your indulgence today. You’ll notice that I have no hard copy of my paper. I would like to say that my commitment to environmental sustainability is so strong that I couldn’t justify wasting the trees on a printed copy of my paper, but the sad fact is that I am a victim of early-onset absent-minded professor syndrome. (A teacher of mine once called this an “occupational hazard” of being a philosopher.) My lovingly annotated presentation notes, complete with marks for where to pause for breath, was left behind on the flight that took me here. I can just imagine the passenger who took my seat later that day ruffling through the in-flight magazines, looking for the crossword and instead being rewarded with a 30-page academic paper entitled “Care and the Pedagogical Relationship: A Teleological Approach.”

Thankfully, I got some laughs, and launched into my actual paper.

The session in which I spoke was called "Institutional Issues," and, if I do say so myself, it was my favorite panel. Ed (the same Ed who drove me to the conference both days), seated to my right, spoke about the limits of institutional rationality. To his right is a professor from West Chester University, who gave a really fascinating powerpoint presentation about assessment in higher education, and its relationship to the complex topic of academic freedom. His presentation was awesome -- I took notes the whole time. The professor on my left, Clevis Headley, spoke about education as the "practice of freedom," in what I thought was a particularly fantastic paper. For some reason, many of the comments in the Q&A session were addressed jointly to Clevis and me, although our papers dealt with ostensibly different topics. I didn't mind -- I loved his paper, so being lumped in with him felt a little bit like being on the same team as one of the "cool kids" in middle school.


I got some of my own questions, though, including a particularly good one from Paget Henry, the professor from Brown, and a few helpful comments afterward from various other conference participants. I felt really good about giving the paper (not too nervous) and the whole experience was a really positive one.

The afternoon session -- our last one of the conference -- featured five different presenters, all discussing some aspect of the racial and cultural politics of higher education. I really enjoyed these talks as well, especially one given by a professor (who maybe was from UWI Mona? not sure) about "textual and ritual liminality in tertiary education" that utilized a particularly evocative metaphor about Caribbean drum bands, and another given by a Brazilian professor from UWI Cave Hill about Paulo Freire, a revolutionary and educational activist who held a position at Harvard, among other places.

All too soon, things wound to a close. We had some poetry from a Cave Hill professor, closing remarks (in which the organizer, Dr. Ochieng'-Odhiambo, said that these were "the shortest two days of his life"), and one last round of tea, biscuits, and fruit salad before we all went our separate ways. It was a wonderful second day to a truly extraordinary first conference experience. I have made many new friends and connections literally all over the world, and had the first opportunity to air my own philosophical ideas in an open and friendly professional academic arena. I am so grateful to Georgetown for giving me the funding to make this trip, and to everyone at UWI Cave Hill who put together such a wonderful program. The philosophy department at Cave Hill is struggling for funding and expansion, but they did an amazing job with this conference. Kudos to them.

Day One: In which I make many new friends

Welcome to UWI Cave Hill!

Ed, one of the conference organizers, came to pick me and one other conference participants up at 8am for the first day. It was a wild drive -- I'm beginning to get the feeling all trips on the road are like that here. (Aside: now admittedly I've only been a few places outside the US, but each place I was struck by how chaotic traffic was compared to the way things are back home. And I'm from New York. We don't realize how good we have it with traffic regulations and a general culture of on-the-road rule-following.) On the way, I got to know Ed -- a professor of sorts at UWI -- and Martin, the other guest here at Rossomar. It turns out that Martin is a former Jesuit and a professor at UWI Mona, the campus in Kingston, Jamaica. He's lived in Jamaica for over twenty years, but originally hails from Cleveland, so his accent made him easier to understand. :)

The cricket field

We pulled up into a parking lot across from the school's big cricket field, pictured above. I went in, registered, got some tea and snacks, then took a little stroll outside the building while I waited for the rest of the conference participants to arrive.

Outside our conference center

Just behind the building where the conference was held, the hill dramatically dropped away, and the views of the turquoise water and bright blue sky were gorgeous. I took a few pictures, being the compulsive photo-snapping tourist that I am.

Tell me, would you have been able to help yourself, with views like these?


I managed to drag myself away from the vista in time for the commencement of the session. I was really blown away by how international the crowd was -- we had presenters from Nigeria, Brazil, Britain, Spain, Trinidad, Jamaica, and (of course) the United States. The first session featured the keynote speaker, an emeritus professor from Exeter, who gave a lecture on his social constructivist theory of mathematics and the implications the model had for math education. The next panel was entitled "Futures for the UWI [University of the West Indies]" (NB: "UWI," much to my enjoyment, was pronounced throughout just as a New Yorker would say "Huey," an erstwhile nickname of mine). The speakers discussed postmodernism and the UWI university system (which has three campuses covering fifteen countries in the Caribbean), the place of Indo-Caribbean philosophy in the Caribbean Academy, and "the Neo-liberal Re-orientation of Schooling." My favorite presentations were the latter two, the former by a professor at Brown, the latter by a professor at UIUC who looked and dressed like any of the locals but (to my ears at least) sported a full-on Irish brogue (!). When we finally broke for lunch, conversation spilled over into the restaurant where we ate Bajan favorites like macaroni pie, sweet pudding, steamed veg, and black-eyed peas with rice. The route to the restaurant took us past Cave Hill's Cricket Research Centre, a building nearly as large as the Multiracial Studies Centre down the road, and rather larger than the UWI Cave Hill Institute for Caribbean Law Centre. Clearly, they take their cricket seriously.

The CLR James Cricket Research Centre

The second session was no less exciting than the first. We kept the focus on the immediate challenges facing the UWI with a panel about elite versus mass education. The UWI is currently in a process of transition (in keeping with the decolonialization of other social institutions) from an elite university to one which provides "mass education." After a break for tea and biscuits, we reconvened for a panel on values in education. My two favorite presentations from this panel were one by a fellow grad student (yay little people! actually this guy was built like a linebacker, but I still felt a connection) at the University of Washington, who spoke about the relationship between fiction and moral education, and a professor of Asian philosophy from the University of Bridgeport, who talked about the need to teach non-Western philosophy for true liberal education in a rabidly shrinking (and therefore globalizing) world. After all this philosophizing, we were pleased to find in our conference folders and invitation to a reception on the Veranda over the cricket field, where we could meet and mingle with participants of the 27th Annual Conference on West Indian Literature. I have to say I didn't mingle with the literature folks, but I did chat with a bunch of philosophers and managed to get a nice shot of a clock tower facing out over the ocean just as dusk began to dim the sky.

Clock tower at dusk

Eventually, the party began to wind down, and Martin and I made the short walk together back to the Rossomar guest house. I learned about his interesting life history and missionary work with the Jesuits, but still managed to obey my sister's orders to watch as many sunsets as possible by keeping one eye on the sky.

The clouds had begun to roll in by that time (it rained later that night) but the sun still managed to set the rim of the horizon on fire.

The sun sets on a wonderful first day in Barbados!

Touchdown!

As we began our final descent towards the island, all that was visible beneath us was more of the serene blue rippled-glass of the ocean. Where was the island?! The nice Bajan lady sitting next to me began chatting to me about her garden and the wonderful climate on Barbados, which helped to distract me from my anxiety temporarily. Soon enough, however, I was pasted to the window once more... but this time I was rewarded for my efforts. A few strains of the most beautiful turquoise asserted themselves against the deeper cerulean of the ocean -- a hint of shallower water -- and suddenly the azure-rimmed shoreline of the island was in view!!

I was struck instantly by how, well, small it seemed, especially compared to my own island. Long Island is nearly 120 miles long, about 1400 square miles, and home to more than 7.5 million people. Barbados, by contrast, is home to only about 275,000 locals, and is just 165 square miles in total land area. (To be fair, Long Island is the largest island in the continental US -- and, I found out in researching this, the most densely populated island in all of the US, including Hawaii).


Anyway, we disembarked from the plane and breezed through customs -- it was nothing like any other international customs I've been through (though admittedly my experience is not too broad compared with some). I quickly located my driver -- a friendly guy named Orlando -- and he regaled me with stories as we drove (down the left side of the road!) to the guest house. Actually, chatting with Orlando reminded me a lot of talking to taxi drivers in Beijing -- not because of any similarities in the topic of our conversation, but in terms of the ratio of words I understood to words I did not. The Bajan accent is a kind of blend of a Caribbean dialect with some strong British and Irish hints thrown in, especially in rounding out the ends of words. This is no doubt an artifact of the island's interesting colonial history, but didn't make for particularly great conversation, especially at first, as I eventually was reduced to smiling and nodding and making noncommittal, friendly noises in response to his indecipherable chit-chat. After a while I began to pick up a bit more of what he was saying, but not much.


We stopped to pick up some groceries, then drove down a twisting gravel road to reach the guesthouse where I am staying. It's certainly not the lap of luxury most people probably imagine for accommodations in Barbados, but the place was immaculately clean and smelled of fresh laundry all over the house when I arrived. Janice showed me to my room, which is on the second floor, with a balcony (!), two rooms (!), two beds (!), and, most crucial of all, AIR CONDITIONING. The very blurry photo above is meant to show the very tropical print of the fabric on the chairs in the "sitting room" where there is a TV, refrigerator, and small table.


In this picture you can see the bedroom behind me, with the beautiful Bajan sunlight streaming in behind me. As you have probably guessed by the fact that you are reading this now, my biggest and happiest surprise was finding that the house has wireless internet, with a better connection than the one I have back at my apartment in DC!

The view from one window (out towards the sea)

The view from another window (down to the street)

I've got some unpacking to do before dinner, and then I'll need to review a bit for the first day of the conference. I'll update tomorrow with details from Day One!

Blogging from the skies!

As I write this, we are cruising at an altitude of 31008ft above the Atlantic Ocean, approximately half-way between New York and Barbados. When I left DC this morning the sun was just beginning to rise, and when we took off from New York about four hours later, the skies were overcast and grey, with an outside temperature just above freezing. In Barbados, the pilot informs us, the temperature is holding steady at around 82°F under sunny skies. Can’t wait to touch down…!!

In other news, I’d forgotten how much I like airports. (Airplanes, not so much… I hate having to sit in the same stale space with a crowd of other people without being able to move for long periods of time. Of course this is only an issue with really long flights, like those to, oh, I don’t know, China, Taiwan, or Thailand – this trip is blissfully short by contrast! But I digress.) There’s something kind of neat about the independence of travel that is really manifest in the airport setting. I’m normally not much of a people-watcher, but I love observing my fellow Americans (and assorted foreigners) here. Caught between time zones and terminals, with the rest of our lives put mostly on hold, we are in a sort of collective suspended motion. We buy pretzels or trail mix; watch CNN on shared flat-panel screens; read books or flip through magazines; queue up on demand; trip over bags and suitcases; and together inhabit a transient space that is at once alien and oddly familiar.

I’ve been trying to put the finishing touches on the material I’ve prepared for my presentation. I’m really quite glad to be going on the second day. There’s a school of thought that would argue it would be better to get things over with by going early on the first day, but since this is my first conference EVER I think I’ll be glad of the opportunity to watch a bunch of others present first to get a sense of what is and isn’t appropriate, and even gladder to have the time to alter what I’ve prepared before I speak. For some reason I don’t feel all that nervous about it yet – maybe because, as situations go, this one is pretty low-risk. All I’m doing is presenting – for the first time – a paper that I wrote in my first semester of graduate school, at a conference that includes lots of non-philosophers who will almost certainly be tuning out anyway, with an audience composed entirely of people I’ve never met before and probably won’t meet again, most of whom actually live in Barbados or the UK. Besides, as I was joking to my friend Kyle yesterday, even if every possible thing goes wrong at the conference and I leave ashamed and humiliated – the next day I’ll wake up and still have an entire weekend to myself on a gorgeous tropical island that I’m not even paying for!!!

Just remind me to keep my receipts.

Programme posted!

Hello hello!

Much excitement here in DC as the date of departure rapidly approaches... The programme for the conference has been posted here. As you can see, I will be presenting during the second morning session on Monday -- not ideal timing as the audience is likely to be fading in and out as they tire of speeches and begin to long for lunch (or is that only me?), but I'm not really complaining. Probably the worst time to speak is mid-afternoon on the second day, when virtually no-one is paying attention any more. I'll also be speaking immediately after one of the main conference organizers (!!). I hope I won't be too nervous!

In other news, I'm just tying up loose ends here (grading, holding office hours, etc.) and packing (sunscreen, bathing suits, books to read on the beach) in preparation for the trip. I'll be leaving very, very early Wednesday morning for a flight to JFK, where I'll spend three hours waiting for the plane to take me to Bridgetown! I'll arrive in Barbados in the afternoon, and will be sure to take loads of pictures on my way to the hotel. Can't wait!

Latest Developments

Tickets have been purchased, hotel arrangements made, and I am getting pretty excited about the trip! I'll be flying to UWI for the conference, which will take place on the 28th and 29th of this month. After that, I'll have two days to explore the island (or, who am I kidding, lie on the beach doing nothing) before heading back to the states. A short trip but hopefully a nice break from winter up here, and a chance to polish up my international exploration skills for my next big adventure this summer: Thailand!