P&PC in Beantown

P&PC is thrilled to be heading to Boston tomorrow for a busy four days at Framingham State University and the Modernist Studies Association's annual conference. The trip to Framingham has a particularly sentimental edge, as we return to the city of our birth—Dad C. was stationed there in the Army—to deliver "From Baraka to Rihanna: Legacies of the Black Arts Movement" as part of Framingham State University's "Stasis & Change" lecture series. After that, on Thursday, we head downtown to serve as chair for the panel "Feeling Revolutionary/Revolutionary Feeling: Sentiment and Affect in Feminist Poetry," which features three of our favorite scholars in the world: Melissa Girard, Linda Kinnahan, and Dee Morris. Then, on Friday, we deliver a paper alongside Donal Harris and Loren Glass as part of the panel "After the Program Era." (Check out the whole MSA program here.)

It's all a wonderful convergence of P&PC networks. You know Girard from her P&PC posts here, here, and here. You know Glass from his P&PC post here. The Morris effect is everywhere in our world, as she chaired our dissertation back in the day at the University of Iowa. Kinnahan is editor of A History of Twentieth-Century American Women's Poetry forthcoming from Cambridge and including an article on popular women's poetry by P&PC staff members. The Framingham visit is being coordinated by longtime P&PC friend but not-yet-contributor Bart Brinkman, and on Saturday we get to spend the day with Heidi Bean, our dear friend and co-editor of Poetry after Cultural Studies. Were it not for the fact that, living on the West Coast most of the time, we don't get to see these people in person very often, we might be a little nauseated by all the good (if not revolutionary) feeling. (Um, yeah, did we mention that we also have social plans with P&PC contributors Marsha Bryant and Erin Kappeler?) But after living in the cold and unforgiving Library of Congress archives for the past three or four months, we're going to give in and enjoy it. Why don't you come join us?