I'm at the airport in Cleveland waiting for my flight back to Baltimore (but I'll have to post this later, when I have internet access).
I enjoyed the Narrative Conference a lot more than I anticipated that I would. Though I worked on the paper I presented in last semester's publications workshop, I haven't really studied Narrative Theory actively since last spring. That class made me want to engage the subject matter, but since my professor works in what they call "unnatural" narratology, I didn't know whether I'd find "regular" narratology particularly interesting or not. As a whole, I found the lectures I attended very compelling, and they encouraged me to continue studying within this division of literary studies. And the people I met there were equal parts friendly and engaged in the work they do.
I think my presentation was fine. I was nervous beforehand because my paper argues that the ways narrative theorists have traditionally defined "narration" and "description" are not adequate, and I make suggestions for how we could re-consider them. I was a little nervous about taking on the role of the graduate student who suggests a significant change to the field despite having only one class in narrative theory under my belt. As the conference continued, I started to worry that I was going to get skewered during the Q & A. But it was fine. I should have trusted my professor enough to realize that he wouldn't have put me in a position where I was presenting a paper that would lead to the sort of baptism-of-fire I was imagining.
Gerald Prince, who wrote A Dictionary of Narratology, was at my talk... I think. I didn't see him come in, so he may have missed my paper. He addressed it vaguely in a general comment about all 4 papers in the Q & A. H. Porter Abbott, who wrote The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, walked into the room after I had already given my talk, listened to the next presenter for approximately 1 minute, looked down at his program, and walked back out. I will henceforth continue to convince myself that he was interested in my paper and left after he realized I was done speaking... because sometimes those of us who work in a perpetual state of self-doubt need to cling to any sense of accomplishment we can find (even if it's only imagined).
My professor had already read several versions of the paper, but he popped in for the Q & A section to help me feel less anxious. I appreciated it. At one point, a member of the audience posed a complicated question to the whole panel, and the only professor on the panel said "I'll let my co-panelists address that, since I've already been talking a lot." So we sat there in silence until I offered my best shot at an answer to the question. My professor told me afterward that it was "bold" of me to be the one to take that question on, and that he thought I did a great job answering the questions I got. (This is a total overstatement, but I appreciated it nonetheless.) He encouraged me to submit my paper to be considered for the "Best Graduate Student Paper" award, so I will do that and probably never hear about it again.
In general, the conference has left me feeling really positively about the conversation in which my work participates. The conference also brought up a perpetual feeling of guilt, though, that I'm always grappling with. One can never do enough. The presence of all these "big names" in the field left me wishing I had read more, researched more, and studied more beforehand so I could have talked to them about their projects, or asked them intelligent questions about how their work might relate to mine. It felt, in some ways, like a huge missed opportunity. But realistically, this kind of pre-planning would have been impossible. I had to devote so much time and energy to my Master's Writing Project before this conference that there's no way I could have managed to "freshen up" on my narratology before I went. I, again, devoted so much energy and momentum to the writing project that I got sick upon its completion. This also limited the degree to which I was willing to "network" with others at the conference; I wanted to sleep and I didn't want to shake a bunch of hands and spread my germs.
I comforted myself by remembering that I could always attend the conference again next year, or perhaps the year after that. These scholars have been attending this conference every year for the past twenty-five, so given that I'm still interested in this subject this field at this time next year, I can return with a little more knowledge in the bank.
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and, now that I'm home, I am so glad to be back! I'm looking forward to my race in the morning and glad I'll have a full day at home before I head back to campus Monday.
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