Series
Shoptalk
Shoptalk authors report on the best and the worst exchanges overheard at academic conferences.
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA 2025 or MLA 2026?
This edition of Shoptalk asks: Can you guess which of the following was overheard at ASA 2025 and which was overheard at MLA 2026?
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA 2019
This year’s American Studies Association annual meeting took place November 7–10 in Honolulu, Hawai’i. ASA President, Scott Kurashige, transformed this year’s …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ASAP 2019
This year the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) convention was held at the University of Maryland, College Park. The hotel bar may have …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ATHE
Theater theorists, historians, and practitioners gathered in Orlando for this year’s annual meeting of ATHE, the Association for Theatre in Higher …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ICA 2019
This year’s International Communication Association (ICA) conference officially took place in the Washington Hilton—or the Hinckley Hilton, as it is called by …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ACLA 2019
This year’s annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association gathered at Georgetown University. Participants met in small …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at MLA 2019
This year’s MLA convention in Chicago, Illinois, was a suspiciously pleasant affair: clear weather, somewhat navigable conference spaces, and proximity to …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA and NWSA 2018
This year Americanists, feminists, feminist Americanists, and everyone between and beyond gathered in downtown Atlanta for the annual meetings of both the …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at AOIR
This October, scholars from 30 countries headed to Montreal for the 19th annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers. Experts discussed the state …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at APSA 2018
Over a holiday weekend in early September, political scientists gathered in the heart of Boston in a mall (well, in a conference center and two hotels …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at Kzoo 2018
Everich yeer, michel clerkes fare tu Michygan and eten, drynke, and telle tydinges. For you plebs who don’t speak Middle English, that means each year …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at C19
This year, members of the Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists gathered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the organization’s fifth biennial …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at MLA 2018
Literary critics that managed the trek to this year’s Modern Language Association conference descended into a professional circle of hell: the convention was held in …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at AAA
The American Anthropological Association’s 116th Annual Meeting was brimming with how can we even? under the Trump administration. The theme …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA
This year’s American Studies Association conference coincided with Chicago’s first snowfall of the season. Its theme was “Pedagogies of Dissent,” and conversations that circulated in the conference commons suggest there was robust critical engagement with emergent subthemes of Pedagogies of Day Drinking, Dissenting from Weather, and Against 8 a.m. Panels. Read on for a neoliberal…
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Shoptalk: Overheard at GSA
Over one thousand scholars gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, in early October for the German Studies Association annual conference. In keeping with the German language’s tendency to prefer the passive construction, it can be reported that many humorous quotes seem to have been overheard. Join us in celebrating the 95 Theses’ quincentennial, titter at the titillating…
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA
Each August, sociologists from across North America gather for their annual meeting. This year they congregated in and around the Palais des congrès …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at Dickens Universe
Each August among the redwoods of the sprawling campus of UC Santa Cruz, academics converge to discuss and celebrate a novel by Charles Dickens. This year that novel was … Middlemarch. Between …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at ACLA
During the first weekend in July, academics from around the world convened in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in order to Perform Dignity, Read at the Surface, and Feel the Unbearable—among a number of other panels at this year’s American Comparative Literature Association conference. As scholars traversed the beautiful cobbled streets, held their canvas bags close to…
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Shoptalk: Overheard at Kzoo
The International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) convenes every year at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI, and thus is far better …
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Shoptalk: Overheard at the Feminist Theory Workshop
On March 24–25, hundreds of feminist, queer, gender, and sexuality studies scholars and activists—representing 87 institutions and 18 countries—gathered at Duke University for its 11th Annual Feminist Theory Workshop. Its attendees proved that, despite the stereotypes, feminists can be funny, especially when they think no one is listening. 1. Person 1: “I wish it was…
