October 4, 2011: NEASA Follow Ups

Just a few follow ups to yesterday’s post about the New England American Studies Association conference and blog:

I’ve gone back and added a “New England ASA” label to all of the earlier posts that focused on NEASA activities and the conference; those six posts, with this as the seventh, can give you a lot more information about the conference and sense of my goals and perspective for it and NEASA more generally. I see it as a great place to put many of my ideals for public scholarly connections and conversations into practice, and would love as always to get perspectives and responses from as many of my readers here as are at all interested.

For the blog, seriously, please check it out (http://neasaconference.blogspot.com). As much as I like my own blog here, the posts over there have videos (including, among many others, a Bugs Bunny cartoon and a telephone company instructional video from the 1950s!) and works of art, songs and cartoons, and so much more. They’re as diverse and multimedia and engaging and challenging as AmericanStudies itself, and they really, really deserve some more feedback and responses. Since I can already tell you are readers of discerning and sophisticated AmericanStudies tastes, I will just ask one more time that you bring those tastes over to the blog and, well, feast.

Finally, here are some quick links to sites and info for some—and I emphasize some—of the amazing people whose voices and work we’ll feature at the conference; I’ve chosen just one link for each person, but there are many more where these come from:

1)      (Saturday) Keynote speaker James Loewen
2)      (Friday) Plenary panelist and Friday evening reader Joan Avant Tavares
3)      Plenary panelist Linda Coombs
4)      Plenary panelist Joe Conforti
5)      Plenary panelist Cathy Stanton
6)      Plenary panelist Kevin McBride
7)      Friday evening reader Melissa Zobel
8)      Friday evening reader Larry Spotted Crow Mann
9)      Friday evening reader Mihku Paul
10)   Saturday Special Session presenter and Plimoth Plantation Curator Karin Goldstein
11)   Saturday late afternoon tour guides Native Plymouth Tours

Can you tell that I’m excited for this conference? Remember to check out the full program draft at http://www.neasa.org (the Conference tab), and please consider joining us at Plimoth! (And check out at the blog in any case!) More tomorrow,

Ben