Catching up....

I'm behind.  I'll admit it.  I've spent part of this morning catching up on the April activities.  I wasn't surprised to find that I'm 60% left-brain, 40% right-brain.  I will dispute the idea that I'm not verbal (this finding would shock my husband as well) - I didn't feel like the test differentiated verbal from aural.  I use words, a lot.  I'll write directions rather than draw them.  I don't process well aurally, however - I need visual anchors, but they can be words.

I think I can illustrate this by following up on my post about going to the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in  mid-April.  It was a lot of fun, though 4 days away put me really behind.  I enjoyed being in Boston right before Patriots' Day and the Boston Marathon, watching more runners arrive every day.  George Takei was an amazing featured speaker.  He covered a broad range of topics from his experience being interned with his family during World War II as a Japanese-American, to being an Asian actor and the stereotypes that can ensue, to his current work in the fight for marriage equality.

Being an academic conference, presenters generally read their papers.  I hate this.  I actually prefer when the presenter uses a powerpoint, as long as they don't then read the powerpoint!  A powerpoint slide with 2-3 main points gives me something to process visually, which then gives me anchors for the information which I'm receiving aurally.  Plus - it's a conference about popular culture; how can you not have visuals!

Several of you commented about how you didn't like history in school - all those dates and facts.  While we're focusing on the American Revolution and US Constitution - since our project is funded by a Teaching American History grant that is supposed to focus on "traditional" American history (a subject of much debate over the 10 years of the grant program's history) - history as a field is much broader.

A number of the presenters were from fields like English (I have no idea what "translation studies" is, when it's in an English department!) but some were from history.  One colleague from Penn State Harrisburg's American Studies program presented an interesting talk about Milton Hershey's use of advertising images, including a baby in a cocoa bean image that I don't remember ever seeing. 

I went to an interesting session about Civil War reenactors.  One presenter talked about how all of the reenactors that he interviewed said they became interested in the Civil War after reading Bruce Catton's illustrated history of the Civil War which was published in the 1960s.  The speaker then looked at how the reenactors' view of the Civil War matches up with the view presented by Catton, rather than the different views presented by history scholars.

Being a pop culture conference, I did also go to sessions about "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dr. Who," as well as children's literature, popular romances, and all sorts of other things.  I did find one other person whose work intersects my grad work - she turned me on to a whole other community of quilters, the Modern Quilt Guild, that I didn't know about.  I have lots of ideas that I wish I had time to pursue!

I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!  By then, hopefully I'll have submitted my final paper for the semester so will be able to enjoy a month off before my summer session class really kicks in at the end of May.

PS - it's May Day - one the one hand, a signficant holiday in labor history.  On the other hand, at my undergraduate alma mater it was also a celebration of the end of the semester.  There will be lots of references to strawberries and cream, bread and roses on my Facebook feed today.