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| CN Tower in Toronto |
If it wasn’t for the three large screens playing the
hockey game, the Irish pub would almost feel authentic. There are certainly
enough signs advertising Guinness, and the waitress’s accent sounds foreign yet
familiar. Still, the ceiling is a tad too high, and the mirrors on one wall
make the building appear airy and spacious, nothing like the quaint cramped
spaces I got used to in Ireland and Scotland.
Of course, I’m not in Ireland, or the UK. I’m in downtown
Toronto, halfway between Ottawa and London. I’ll be “home” in a few hours
(still not quite sure what that word means) but for now I’m enjoying the last
meal of my working vacation, courtesy of Western University. Gotta say, the
food-allowance part of going to conferences is definitely something I could get
used to.
Where have I been these past few days? In Ottawa, at the
21st Annual Underhill Graduate Student Colloquium, hosted by the
History Department at Carleton University. The conference was centered around
the idea of performing history, so I presented a paper on dance in Ben Jonson’s
1609 Masque of Queens, a court
performance where the dance styles were very much tied to political opinions.
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| Exhibit at the National Gallery in Ottawa |
I’d never presented a paper before, so I can’t say I wasn’t
nervous, but this colloquium was pretty much the ideal place for a first
presentation. It was an extremely supportive forum for graduate students to
present their research—the conference was fairly evenly divided between MAs and
PhDs, there were a fair number of universities represented (UNB, U of T,
McMaster, Western, and UBC, to name a few), and projects outside of straight
history were definitely welcome (such as Art History, Medieval Studies, Digital
Humanities, and my field, English). The other conference attendees were
extremely friendly, the other papers presented (41 in all) were fascinating,
and the question periods at the end of each session generated intriguing
discussions.
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| Catching the train |
I presented on the first session of the first day, which
was originally something I was quite pleased about. After all, it was lovely to
show up on Thursday morning, present for fifteen minutes, and then enjoy the
rest of the conference stress-free. However, since the conference was such a
supportive environment, it was too bad that I presented so early, before many
people had shown up. There were only ten other people in the room when I gave
my talk, which I’m told isn’t a poor showing for an academic conference, but
the rest of the panels I attended later in the day had 20-40 attendees and a
much more energetic question period.
Still, it was a fantastic experience to tell other people
about my research. After all, up to this point, no one except my professors, my
mother, and my best friend have ever
read anything academic I’ve written, so an audience of ten actually represents
a 333% increase. I loved standing in front of the room, presenting my ideas to
a group of people, however small, who cared about what I was talking about and
who were all working on equally fascinating projects. Underhill may have been a
great conference to start with, but it certainly won’t be my last.
