Academic Conferences Extracurricularly

Apparently, there are better things to do at the Modern Language Association’s annual conventions than go to seminars on “Seducing the Revolutionary Atlantic World.”
In the June 22nd issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, University of Washington English professor Jessica Burstein offers some helpful tips on hooking up at academic conferences.

“When you get there, the first thing to do is get a smoking room,” she writes. “Of course you gave it up years ago.”

“Good for you. The truth is, though, that the best-looking people are smokers, and if you’re lucky you’ll end up with one of them, or at least have a chance to experiment with their lung capacity.”

Thanks, Jessica. She also advises swiping someone else’s name tag and going incognito for the event.

“Famous people’s name tags are slightly more dangerous, but here, as elsewhere in life, reward comes with risk,” she notes. “For two giddy days I was Judith Butler.”

“I actually got her that raise, not that she thanked me.” That actually makes more sense than giving the more widely known JB a bonus for her feminist theories.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.