Keynotes, flyposts and messing with the texts

                                                                                                 

 Today we went flyposting around the Illini union building, the central venue for the conference in the hope of encouraging people to come to our main session on Saturday and also of letting the conference know how many of us were here and what we were up to. We also had some notices about the arcio-sponsored conference on emerging approaches to research this coming September. At about eleven we whizzed around the building (there are four floors) , blue tak and sellotape akimbo, leafleting toilets, tables and noticeboards. By lunch time they had all 'disappeared'. Interesting!!  I have a few left to put out and about in the cafe tomorrow... but I somehow get the feeling that flyposting is not remotely kosher here!!! Never mind, I gather that Laurel Richardson gave our session a plug during her workshop this afternoon (and also read out my writing from her workshop last year, which I was pathetically pleased to hear about ... honestly- humans, egos and ownerships, when will I/we grow up!!)

Meanwhile, as Jonathan says (below) , the conference got underway with workshops etc. Jonathan and Ken conducted a morning workshop (there were 33 in all) and I went to Susanne Gannon's which was superb and gave me lots of ideas for 'messing' with people's obsession with individual ownership of texts, as well as lots of interesting reading..I've already rushed out and ordered Patti Lather's 'engaging science', but I took away a whole book list. As an arts-based researcher, I found I had much common ground with Susanne's background in the humanities and use of literary and aesthetic conceptualisations of narrative inquiry. She is going to be great to work with if/when she comes to Bristol.

There were two keynotes this evening, one from Isamu Ito,

from the university of Fukui, Japan, about the effects of globalisation on rural identities and the changing social constructions of farming and rural lives in contemporary Japan. This was a good talk that had my full attention and had many parallels (and differences) with similar developments in the UK, but the keynote that really struck a chord with me was Cynthia Dillard's, from Ohio State University, on 'learning to remember the things we've learned to forget', which was an exquisitely worded contribution to her growing body of work on endarkened feminisms and the sacred nature of research. What struck me most about this keynote was her everyday sense of  the significance of intergenerational memory and her questioning of our contemporary fascination with differences at the expense of rootedness, locatedness, sacredness and collectivity. To quote Cindy Gowen, who I was sitting next to, Cynthia totally rocked. I hope this keynote gets published somewhere.