MLA was FANTASTIC, btw. Walter Benn Michaels is so vivid, so ferociously smart, so combative without being an asshole - he was amazing. And Gayatri Spivak was an absolute juggernaut, just rolling one with more and more astounding stuff with barely pauses to breathe, much less to explain her incredible intellectual leaps. Eliza Richards's paper was FABULOUS - I'm really looking forward to reading her book! I was so impressed with her - such elegance of reasoning and her interpretations were lovely and extremely penetrating. Gregg Lambert was also dizzyingly good - and I understood a lot more of what he was saying than I did last time I heard him give a paper. (So that was gratifying. I went from understanding about 1/8th of what he said to about 1/2. Progress, people! Progress!) There were tons of other really good things that I heard but I don't have my notes to hand (I need to go through and type them out soon, before I stop being able to interpret my own chicken scratches) and I'll leave that post for another day.

Overall, it was a great experience. I got a lot of ideas, and I really enjoyed the collegiality - I can definitely envision myself having a place within that, and so it really helped me begin to "write myself into the university" in a very real way.

I also got my copy of Professors As Writers the other day and am really excited about implementing the techniques Boice proposes for more writing productivity. So all in all I'm very much looking forward to the new semester!