Conference

I returned yesterday evening from the Central Renaissance Conference in Columbia Missouri. It was very interesting, although since the period was a bit early for me and a lot of the presentations were literary, I was aware of being in a little over my head. There were four papers on Titus Andronicus, for instance. I saw a few people I knew- always a pleasure to renew contacts. I'll review the papers in a subsequent post, all were impressive, some were also interesting.

Since I'm not supported by any institution, I get no travel support and have to take off work to go to these, so I only attend the ones reasonably close to home. This means that I'll go to stuff that isn't in the heart of my academic area or period. I don't go very often, either, but it does a good job of re-connecting me to the values and culture of the acadamy. Being away, either in education or some other employment, carries a different culture and values. Its a sad statement that the culture and values of education and higher ed are so different and so often incompatable, but they are.

Since I participate on several academic mailing lists and do a lot of academic reading, its not so much the ideas of the academy I get back in contact with. Like the latter, I overheard one sustained anti-Bush rant by three literary types which wandered way off the path of sense and reason. I heard one of the participants give a paper, and it was well reasoned and contained solid evidence. Why its possible to abandon these standards in contemporary politics strikes me as very odd.