conferences

This past weekend I attended the SEASECS conference in Auburn, Alabama, my PhD alma mater. This conference is a regional meeting of the Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, which is not exactly my area of specialty. However, this year's theme of legacies and contexts worked nicely with my research on romance fiction and chick lit, and encouraged me to trace these contemporary genres back to some earlier authors and origins. The obvious draw of the conference: location! My circle of grade school friends and I all traveled back to Auburn to revisit some of our favorite haunts, see our former profs (now our colleagues!), and present together.

The social aspects of the conference lived up to my hopes--I dined on Mellow Mushroom pizza, talked American Lit with several former profs, and drank coffee (and more adult beverages) with my friends. Surprisingly, the professional aspects of the conference surpassed my expectations. I received helpful feedback for my ongoing project of tracing the lineage of Chick Lit back to the 18th century and legitimizing a derided genre. Also, my friends and I garnered possible publication interest in our project on new forms of the novel! Hoorah!