I’ve been wildly productive so far this new year.  I’m working on new stories, dusting off some old pieces and reworking them, contemplating different projects and genres, soliciting books for review for the Erotica Readers and Writers Association (if you have a forthcoming title and would like a review, drop me a note) and working on a column idea.  I’m determined 2009 is going to be a year of tremendous writing productivity.  To that end, I’m also looking at writing conferences to attend.  It feels good to be surrounded by writers and I need a little of that writing camaraderie this year to keep me motivated.

Speaking of conferences, I stumbled across a link on Mary Anne Mohanraj’s blog that made me reconsider my opinion of academic conferences.  An article at Inside Higher Ed suggests that there’s a lot of sex going on at academic conferences such as MLA (which was just held in San Francisco).

Many presenters at the MLA use categorization to make their points, and this session was no exception. Jennifer Drouin, an assistant professor of English and women’s studies at Allegheny College, argued that there are eight forms of conference sex (although she noted that some may count additional forms for each of the eight when the partners cross disciplinary, institutional or tenure-track/non-tenure track, or superstar/average academic boundaries).

(The rest of the article is here.)

Eight kinds of conference sex?  Who knew?  Obviously, as an adjunct I’m barely on the fringes of academia, so maybe this is old news to tenured professors.  It really shouldn’t surprise me since I already knew sci-fi geeks get laid more than jocks.  Why not academic geeks?  Perhaps it’s Darwinism at work here-- the smart humans are getting it on at academic conferences while the dumb humans are busy picking out protein powder at GNC and admiring themselves in mirrors.

Just for the record, I was considering attending the Popular Culture Association’s annual conference in New Orleans this year long before I read this article.

Posted by Kristina in Musings at 07:58 PM Permalink