This is the Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, where I spent a gorgeous fall Saturday this weekend at their annual graduate conference. I’d forgotten how much I like Northeast autumns. It’s easy to forget things like that in Los Angeles. The leaves actually change colors, you guys! When you come inside after walking around outside, your nose and cheeks are flushed and cold to the touch! Drinking hot pumpkin spice lattes actually MAKES SENSE (as opposed to attempting to drink them to get in the “fall spirit” when it’s 90 degrees outside).
The conference was great—intimate, unlike so many graduate conferences. Held in the house. Almost everyone listened to all the papers presented. I’d run off copies of a handout for my presentation, but somehow forgot to actually print off the damn paper itself, so I ended up reading from my laptop—but no one cared, and a few people even liked it, I think! Sometimes academic work can feel really lonely, and sometimes I even forget why I’m pursuing certain avenues of thought, or why I thought I wanted to read certain books. But hearing people like me present their thoughts about a wide range of Early Modern topics—not just Shakespeare and Milton, but Kyd and Heywood and some guy named Clement Ellis and Renaissance armor—reminded me why I care about this stuff. I even came away excited to read some new things.
And! Afterwards I met up with Sarah Malone, who is just as awesome and nice and interesting in person as she is on Tumblr. Real-life Tumblr people! They exist!
As is Elizabeth! So much fun! I’m so glad she got the first day that felt like proper New England fall.
The Renaissance Center is one of my favorite spots on the UMass campus. We’ve been lucky to have our start/end of the year festivities here the last few years, looking out over the fields and the valley as dogs run by with their joggers.
