Pass it On – “ESQ: The Year in Conferences”

My dissertation director, Augusta Rohrbach, also happens to be the editor of ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance. As you can imagine, in exchange for all her scholarly mentoring I feed her information about conference backchannels and the way information moves around online. She is well aware of the valuable scholarship going on beyond the walls of the MLA convention and the ALA annual conference—conferences of all shapes and sizes showcase good work, and conversations continue online (or can, at least).

To that end, ESQ plans to publish “reports from the field,” in which “the field” can (and should) include any backchannel conversations during or after the fact. So say, for instance, that you are at ALA and attend an especially provocative panel about C21 reading practices and C19 American literature. Let’s say that during that panel you tweeted something and people picked up on it and had a conversation. Then suppose that conversation moved to the blogs. All of that is fair game for a “journalistic treatment” of the event—write it up.

Of course, if you happen to attend a panel focused on the traditional codex and you think it was spectacular and no one talked about it online, that’s cool too (and probably more likely)—write it up.

The call for participants appears below. You’d think this would be on the ESQ website but it isn’t. With permission (and request), I’m publicizing it here. I hope many of my C19 Americanist graduate students friends will take advantage of the opportunity.

ESQ: The Year in Conferences

The Editors of ESQ announce a new feature to debut in an early issue of 2011. We are seeking contributions for a group-authored overview of work relevant to nineteenth-century Americanists that has been presented on the conference circuit during the previous year.

We are seeking short, journalistic treatment of select conference papers, presentations, panels, and related events. Submissions should not exceed 250 words per panel; conference size will determine the number of panels to be covered. Deadline for submissions: as soon after the event as possible, for fresh recall; or January 10, 2011 at the latest.

We are particularly interested in reports from conferences sponsored by the American Literature Association, the American Studies Association, the Modern Language Association, C19, and the College Literature Association, as well as from other conferences large and small in which there is significant work being done on topics pertaining to the interests of ESQ. A service we especially hope to provide is the opening of cross-field and interdisciplinary windows onto new scholarly enterprises that may resonate for nineteenth-century Americanists but not come naturally into their view over the course of a conference year.

Faculty and graduate students in all fields are invited to participate. Please direct inquiries to Jana Argersinger [argerj AT wsu.edu] and/or Augusta Rohrbach [rohrbach AT wsu.edu].

March 22, 2010  Tags: community, conferences, ESQ  Posted in: Academics

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