Friday, January 8, 2010

Day 3: We're Totally Wrecked

These multi-day conferences can destroy you.

So the conference is in beautiful San Diego. That's lovely, but we were still hustling this morning to get to our 9:30 panels. I went to the second session of "Slaving Paths", which turned out to be all about slaves in the British imperial structure. I was pleased with the outcome. After the panel Sarah, Jen, Jordan, and I enjoyed a delicious sushi lunch. We should have ordered sake, though, because my afternoon panel was a disaster. I was really looking forward to this panel on suffering and martyrdom in colonial North America, but it turned into an apology-filled ideology fest. I was sorely disappointed and trudged off to the Exhibition Hall.

The Exhibition Hall is every historian's dream, because it is chock-full of books AND boasts the only free liquor giveaway in the whole shebang. I bumped into Gil Kelly, my supervisor from the Omohundro Institute, and he took me on a tour of Institute authors, all of which were very impressive. It was nice to see the Institute staff outside of their natural habitat.

We finished up perusing the books and headed for Seaport Village for pizza, where we devoured a pie and a pitcher of beer while gazing out into the sunset over the water. We then hustled back to the conference for a graduate student social event, which I affectionately termed "The Graduate Student Friendliness Seminar". We met some nice people, made quick work of the chicken satay, and ran back to the hotel for a bit of rest.

Even though the conference continues until Sunday, I really think that tomorrow is something of the grand finale, so we shall have to see. Now it is time for a nap so we can reboot for ... more history!

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