ICFA, only a week late . . .
Apr. 5th, 2004 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelseagirl. . . because I came home to one of the most prep-intensive weeks in my entire teaching career. I now have four DVD slideshows on Alice (3 on the illustrations, one on Carroll's photography), lectures on the illustrators and on the comparison between Alice's Adventures Underground (the story he wrote for Alice Liddell) and Wonderland, and for my other class, on the Scientific Revolution and on Slavery and the Atlantic System. All I can say is they better rehire me for next spring now that I've got all this great material! Plus my Dante minicourse ended last Tuesday -- I'll miss my enthusiastic continuing ed students, but so glad to have the time back.
ICFA was wonderful! Of course you all want to read what's behind the cut, but just in case. ;-) We arrived in Fort Lauderdale to so-so weather, M. got a cellphone call from John K., our Onion friend, who asked him if he wanted to go see Ricky Gervaise (from The Office) that afternoon and told him the weather in NYC was 71 degrees. Why are we here, we wondered.
But it got much, much better. I participated in a panel on Fan Culture and Academia at (eep) 8:30 am the first morning; it was quite a lively discussion and I was amazed at how many people were not only conscious, but really alert at that time in the morning. Turns out the panel chair and organizer is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caras_galadhon and one of the other panelists jennyo. LJ is everywhere. We had a moment of Sean Bean/Sharpe squeeing after the panel which was unexpected and delightful.
Peter Straub read the funniest parody of film noir ever, in a reading that afternoon, and I saw a panel on Elizabeth Hand's writing that she participated in. Got a little nervous because they talked a great deal about John Crowley, the subject of my next day's paper. We got to chat with Straub and Hand briefly because they sat down by us at the bar before dinner; this is a very friendly event. :-) That night there was a reading by Elizabeth Hand, and if you haven't read her, *Mortal Love*, coming out in June, looks like it's going to be incredible! Also Tom Shippey, who wrote *JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century*, gave a talk, which made M. very happy. The guy was so funny and dynamic; now I've got to find a copy of the book for M's birthday!
The next am, 8:30 again, I gave the paper on John Crowley, which I think went quite well, in a panel with papers on Gene Wolfe and J.G. Ballard. One of the participants gave me some good ideas about where to look to publish it when I pull it together in article form. M. gets good husband points for waking up to cheer me on at both. He got to see Stephen Donaldson read, and I saw a panel with Nalo Hopkinson on her pulling together of Mojo: Conjure Stories, that was really fascinating. Some of the participating writers were on it, too.
The banquet lunch was boooring, though the people we sat with were very nice. The sun came out and the English all turned bright red, as they are wont to do -- both M., and also Mr. Shippey and another one of the guest scholars on that night's panel.
Saturday we didn't have to be up early, but somehow we were. The weather was good again, so we rented a car and took one of those Everglades airboat tours, which we'd both always wanted to do. (I used to have my grandma in Florida, but she was on the Gulf Coast and I never had the chance to go.) Caitlin Kiernan didn't show for her reading, but I heard F. Brett Cox read a story and we ended up meeting him later. M. wanted back into the hot tub, so we had a margarita at the poolside bar and then went in. We ended up chatting with Elizabeth Hand (who was interested in reading my Crowley paper -- now I must try to get a draft together before she does her signing in NYC in July), her partner John Clute, and Brett. Very fun. We'd decided not to do the banquet, so we took the car and drove out to an English pub near the beach we'd seen on our earlier wanderings. Turned out to be not fish and chips so much as excellent food -- M. had a filet mignon to die for and I had a seafood dish with curry sauce which was superb. Then back to the conference, back to the hot tub, where we met some more attendees including Alison and her husband, who'd met at the conference five years back and had been attending ever since. We dried off, dressed up a bit, and hit the 11pm cocktail party where we chatted with Alison, Brett, got to meet Andy Duncan, another new writer who was really charming. Brian Aldiss was off his face drunk; M. finally got to chat with him and with Tom Shippey when he went out for a smoke. Shippey, despite being a philologist/linguist, mistook M.'s London accent for Australian! Well, he teaches in St. Louis now, so maybe his ear's been Americanized; he sounds very Home Counties himself.
The next am we dropped off the car, got shuttled to the airport, experienced the JFK AirTrans thing again (M. is positive the recorded voice is Brent Spiner), and were home again.
ICFA was wonderful! Of course you all want to read what's behind the cut, but just in case. ;-) We arrived in Fort Lauderdale to so-so weather, M. got a cellphone call from John K., our Onion friend, who asked him if he wanted to go see Ricky Gervaise (from The Office) that afternoon and told him the weather in NYC was 71 degrees. Why are we here, we wondered.
But it got much, much better. I participated in a panel on Fan Culture and Academia at (eep) 8:30 am the first morning; it was quite a lively discussion and I was amazed at how many people were not only conscious, but really alert at that time in the morning. Turns out the panel chair and organizer is
caras_galadhon and one of the other panelists jennyo. LJ is everywhere. We had a moment of Sean Bean/Sharpe squeeing after the panel which was unexpected and delightful.Peter Straub read the funniest parody of film noir ever, in a reading that afternoon, and I saw a panel on Elizabeth Hand's writing that she participated in. Got a little nervous because they talked a great deal about John Crowley, the subject of my next day's paper. We got to chat with Straub and Hand briefly because they sat down by us at the bar before dinner; this is a very friendly event. :-) That night there was a reading by Elizabeth Hand, and if you haven't read her, *Mortal Love*, coming out in June, looks like it's going to be incredible! Also Tom Shippey, who wrote *JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century*, gave a talk, which made M. very happy. The guy was so funny and dynamic; now I've got to find a copy of the book for M's birthday!
The next am, 8:30 again, I gave the paper on John Crowley, which I think went quite well, in a panel with papers on Gene Wolfe and J.G. Ballard. One of the participants gave me some good ideas about where to look to publish it when I pull it together in article form. M. gets good husband points for waking up to cheer me on at both. He got to see Stephen Donaldson read, and I saw a panel with Nalo Hopkinson on her pulling together of Mojo: Conjure Stories, that was really fascinating. Some of the participating writers were on it, too.
The banquet lunch was boooring, though the people we sat with were very nice. The sun came out and the English all turned bright red, as they are wont to do -- both M., and also Mr. Shippey and another one of the guest scholars on that night's panel.
Saturday we didn't have to be up early, but somehow we were. The weather was good again, so we rented a car and took one of those Everglades airboat tours, which we'd both always wanted to do. (I used to have my grandma in Florida, but she was on the Gulf Coast and I never had the chance to go.) Caitlin Kiernan didn't show for her reading, but I heard F. Brett Cox read a story and we ended up meeting him later. M. wanted back into the hot tub, so we had a margarita at the poolside bar and then went in. We ended up chatting with Elizabeth Hand (who was interested in reading my Crowley paper -- now I must try to get a draft together before she does her signing in NYC in July), her partner John Clute, and Brett. Very fun. We'd decided not to do the banquet, so we took the car and drove out to an English pub near the beach we'd seen on our earlier wanderings. Turned out to be not fish and chips so much as excellent food -- M. had a filet mignon to die for and I had a seafood dish with curry sauce which was superb. Then back to the conference, back to the hot tub, where we met some more attendees including Alison and her husband, who'd met at the conference five years back and had been attending ever since. We dried off, dressed up a bit, and hit the 11pm cocktail party where we chatted with Alison, Brett, got to meet Andy Duncan, another new writer who was really charming. Brian Aldiss was off his face drunk; M. finally got to chat with him and with Tom Shippey when he went out for a smoke. Shippey, despite being a philologist/linguist, mistook M.'s London accent for Australian! Well, he teaches in St. Louis now, so maybe his ear's been Americanized; he sounds very Home Counties himself.
The next am we dropped off the car, got shuttled to the airport, experienced the JFK AirTrans thing again (M. is positive the recorded voice is Brent Spiner), and were home again.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 06:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 08:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 08:50 am (UTC)His Ramses was one of my first actor crushes.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 10:32 am (UTC)Sean
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 01:18 pm (UTC)Her most recent was a collection of short fiction which is only orderable in hardback from Britain; I'm currently trying to justify the $50 plus postage; I really want it!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-06 02:13 pm (UTC)*LOL* I think some of us were just doing a good impression of consciousness. I was, anyway, although I doubt it was a "good" impression.
We had a moment of Sean Bean/Sharpe squeeing after the panel which was unexpected and delightful.
*G* That was lovely. I'm still a bit embarrassed about grabbing you like that, though. Sorry. Eeep.
The banquet lunch was boooring
Well, you're always welcome to join us for lunch/dinner/etc. at future conferences. The fandom scholars, I have noticed, tend to gravitate to one another at those events anyway. ^_^
no subject
Date: 2004-04-06 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-07 05:18 pm (UTC)And it just got added to my cv. I love it when having fun is good for the job!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-07 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-07 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-08 05:04 am (UTC)In any case, looking forward to seeing you around LJ!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-07 05:17 pm (UTC)I was sorry I didn't get to more of the fandom/fanfic panels -- we kind of skipped around from track to track, enjoying everything as we went. But I'll definitely look for you next year!