Extemporaneous? Not that kind of presentation.

Our panel was largely uneventful. There were three people there who weren’t our friends – thank you Lora Arduser and Mark DiMaggio for your support! – and I’m conflicted as to how I feel about that.  With so many sessions (20) at the same time AND the placement of our panel in the last spot of the day (5-6:15 pm), I wasn’t expecting a large crowd. There are just too many interesting things to choose from. The rhetoric of Roman coins? Super cool. Wish I could have heard that.

It would have been nice to get a sense that people are interested in the work that Kim, Chris, and I are doing, although in some respect a smaller audience takes a little bit of the pressure off. For anxiety-based reasons, a decent sized audience allows you to kind of gaze out and see no one, but a tiny audience forces you to spread the eye contact among the few, specific individuals more intimately. I always feel I need to do more entertaining for small groups than larger ones.

And speaking of entertaining, let’s take a short stroll down audience engagement land, which is not anywhere near the Loews Philadelphia hotel.  With the exception of one, every single presenter I’ve seen here has read her paper aloud to the audience. Most have not had any visual aids. Those that  did use PPT read from their slides. I’m surprised by this, although I might be alone in my surprise. I don’t really think this would fly in the basement of the Education Building. I am aware that this is standard Lit conference behavior, but I didn’t expect it from rhetors.  It could also just be that I went to sessions where the presentation style was to read – remember, you miss 95%. 

You know, quite honestly, I’d love to write more, something all theory-like and intellectual, but I’m tired. Conferences are mentally and physically exhausting, and truly I think they take some time to process over the few days afterward.  It has been a whirlwind of theory – very tasty, slow to digest.