October 3, 2011: Join Us, Pleas

In one month and one day, the New England American Studies Association’s 2011 conference will begin. As you probably know (since I’ve bludgeoned you about the head with the info on more than one prior occasion), the conference will be held this year at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and focuses on the theme of “American Mythologies: Creating, Recreating, and Resisting National Narratives.” As you can see from the latest program draft, available at the website linked above, the conference is really rounding out nicely—besides all of the great panels, we have James Loewen’s keynote address, a plenary panel on Plimoth and Plymouth featuring five distinct and impressive voices, a Friday evening reading and performance by regional indigenous writers, special sessions for secondary educators and on Plimoth’s facilities, an end-of-conference tour by Native Plymouth Tours, and a lot more. And you can have access to all of that, including to Plimoth Plantation for both days, for only a $20 Attendee registration fee! If you’re regionally located and have any interest in AmericanStudies (and duh, you’re reading this blog!), please consider joining us—the registration form is here, and you can of course email me (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu) with any questions.

I know, of course—and am extremely excited to know—that many of the folks who have found their way to this blog are anything but regional to the New England area. But even if you live in Iran, or Singapore, or Latvia, or the UK, or Canada, or Brazil, or any of the many other countries from which folks have accessed pages here, you can and most definitely should join our conference conversations at the pre-conference blog: http://neasaconference.blogspot.com. Hopefully you all have found things to interest you here (and please as always leave comments with your perspectives and thoughts!), but I’m one AmericanStudier—the pre-conference blog has featured dozens, with still more to come in the next five weeks leading up to the conference. All the earlier posts are still there, archived by categories, so you can and will find something up your alley; and again new posts will be going up over the next weeks as well. The blog has had pretty much everything, with only one exception: not quite as many comments and responses as our incredible roster of presenters and posts deserve. So I’ll ask, for the last time in this space, I promise, if you can click over to the blog and add a comment on any post that interests you there—it’ll mean a lot to the poster, and just as importantly will get your voice and ideas into the conference conversations in this virtual but no less significant way.

I hope you’ll consider coming to Plimoth in November if you’re able, but if you’re reading this, that makes you definitely able to come to the blog. And I’d sure love to see you there! Thanks, and more tomorrow,

Ben

PS. No links this time, just a reiteration of those conference ones above. Join us, one way or another, won’t you?