Conferencing

When I mention I'm going to the American Society for Aesthetics conference I'm asked if I'm a plastic surgeon. How quickly words change meaning! For my people, the Victorians, and for those who came before them, Aesthetics was (and still is) the study of Beauty. Today it means getting a tummy tuck or a chemical peel. Beautiful, perhaps, by the standards of the day, but hardly beauty of the lasting quality or type.

Rather than a group of plastic surgeons (although the hotel did double book us with a group of general practice surgeons, so we had to hold panels in the bar -- all in not so bad a proposition) rather even than a group of stodgy academics, we are a motley group who just so happen to like visiting Santa Fe in the summertime.

This was my fifth time here, and it probably represented the first REAL paper on Aesthetics that I've yet given. Like most academics I often take a paper I've written, do a few (ironically) "cosmetic" changes" and tack "...and the Aesthetics of _____" on to the title. So I've given a paper entitled "E.M. Forster and the Aesthetics of Wagner in Howards End" in the past...and "Tennyson and the Aesthetics of Homoeroticism in In Memoriam." This time, since I'm out of seminar papers to recycle, I wrote one from scratch, and I think it turned out okay.

The title was "'Fairer than the Sons of Men': Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Aesthetics of Christ." I took as the starting point a sermon that Hopkins preached while a (Jesuit) curate at a tiny village church in Bedford Leigh, Lancashire, England. In it he has a long and rapturous section where he describes the physical beauty of the body of Christ. It's weird stuff, and given the climate of the day, potentially edgy. Yet, given Hopkins's own aesthetic sensibilities, especially concerning the relationship of Truth to Beauty, it makes perfect sense. As perfect Truth, for Hopkins, Christ had to be perfectly Beautiful. I received several very good suggestions and comments in the Q&A afterward (actually, if I may patteth mine own backeth, I received the bulk of the questions!)

Beyond this, though, I continued to make and cultivate some important friendships with professors, both working and retired, who expressed genuine interest in my work. One in particular, who has been a good friend from my first days here, offered to mentor me in things both professional and personal (as it turns out, we've had some of the same life experiences, and he kindly offered to be a person I could "vent" with).

This is the real "goal" of academic conferences, and it's an area that I'm not always good at: making connections, meeting people, getting one's name out. When I finally finish the dissertation and enter the job market ("How long Oh Lord, How long??") I'll have a long and, I hope, distinguished history with these people, and with other academics throughout the country and the world. Then it will be time to ask, kindly, for letters of introduction and support. It's almost always who one knows, rather than what one knows...