Friday, February 29, 2008

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.

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