Dr Karl Stolley

Chicago, IL—

I should know better than to think I’m capable of blogging a conference. Particularly a small, intimate one like C&W, whose attendees are nothing but like-minded scholars interested in roughly the same things. To do anything but spend the whole conference listening and talking would have been a missed opportunity.

Needless to say, the conference was terrific: the UGA folks, particularly their graduate students, did an outstanding job hosting, keeping people fed, and providing, among many other things, some of the best presentation rooms I’ve seen at a conference. (Having helped to host C&W at Purdue in 2003, I remember all too well how much effort goes into keeping all of the conference attendees happy and organized.).

But beyond the hosting, the non-stop talking and collegiality made this conference what it was. Usually, the week after conferences is nothing but recovery from intellectual overload (if you’re lucky). But this one felt different. I remember being at the CCCC in Chicago one year, when I heard two prominent figures in the rhet/comp field talking on the escalator behind me: “Do you remember,” one of them observed/asked, “when we used to come to this conference and we actually got things done?” The comment always struck me as funny; but now I think I understand what that person was talking about. Coming together to discuss one other’s research, or meet in tiny informal groups and talk about electronic dissertations, up-and-coming digital presses, and even participate in the making of a conference presentation on “What is new media?" (video alone on YouTube)—that’s what makes it feel like something got done. Because something did. And there was no time to blog it.