Well, my first conference presentation is official over and was officially rocked. I had the opportunity to present with two of the smartest and most beautiful people in graduate level world history today: Shirtless Canadian and Kungfuramone.
We successfully managed to convince twenty or so prominent historians that our kooky websites were not, in fact, overzealous book reports, but real down to earth historical synthesis that would let us play with the big kids. In all seriousness, this is the first time I had to present my work and the first time I really got to hear what my adopted cohort was working on. i've always known they were brilliant, but I really got to see how brilliant for the first time today. Shirtless did an impeccable job of conveying several hundred years of whaling history into a funny and engaging narrative. While Kungfu gave an equally strong presentation on the interconnectedness of the labor and consumption of the coffee story. I'd love to pair the coffee and chocolate stories side by side and call the lectures the "Double Mocha Approach to Consumption in World History".
My talk was well received and I got really good feedback on areas I can expand into. Honestly, the most surprising part was how excited people were about the topic and the number of people who thought it would make a good dissertation project or a good book. I was at my wit's end when working on this project, but it's given me more mileage than anything else I've done in graduate school. I already have a dissertation project, and this one would have way too many challenges as a diss (mainly that funding is still done w/in the framework of nation-state and it would take me years to finish if I decided to go this route), but I'm absolutely going to keep collecting material and consider it as a "what are you working on next?" piece. Something that L (the most wonderful husband in the world who came to support me and stayed for the discussion) mentioned is that this would even be a topic that would interest people outside the immediate professional field. Commodities are something people can wrap their heads around, and my topic might actually interest that elusive general audience that I would really like to get in touch with. Even better, much of the work would be in English and French sources! Woo hoo!
The adrenaline is pumping, I should probably use it to get some work done, but instead I'm going to make brownies, eat lunch, and then watch the superbowl with a couple of beers.
congrats! glad to hear it went well.
ReplyDelete~Ana