I have decided that I am the Dawn Weiner of conference-goers. Maybe I’m Ugly Betty (who is decidedly nicer than Dawn, but still out of sync). I am the CAA attendee that all the serious panelists hate: I walk in an out of panels, I type on my laptop when in the audience, I walk hurriedly down the halls, my nose in the conference program, nearly running into everyone my path. I am proud to say, however, that my cell phone has not gone off once during the entire conference. More than I can say for a surprising amount of other attendees. What is up with that? Have we not learned to turn phones off during public presentations?? Still?  (more…)

Responding to Beth and Steven’s excellent proposal, (”Couldn’t we rethink this a bit?”) though not, lamentably, in the form of a comment — the idea of expanding the conference format via modern technology is exciting and full of promise…

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This post was co-written yesterday by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.

We find it both disconcerting and wonderful to see so many of our own kind here at CAA. The artists and art historians were out in force this morning – groggy and in search of coffee. Somehow the Starbucks in West Hall was dark, while what felt like half a city away – at the other end of the convention center — there was a Starbucks adjacent to the Lawn Care convention. Why this should be, no one seemed to know. But we all managed to find our way, coffee in hand, to the first sessions. (more…)

I arrived late to the morning session but was able to catch a bit of the Web 2.0 and Art History session. The topic is undoubtedly germane to any of use who teach in the arts and know that students are CONSTANTLY texting, facebooking, and viewing multiple websites at once, while listening to our lectures. It’s imperative to find new ways of utilizing these technologies to our pedagogical advantage. The “Millenials” (the current generation of college  students) are characterized by a desire to be actively involved in the classroom/lecture experience. This is indeed evident in my own classrooms, I have students daily who use their phones or laptops to provide real time fact-checking for each lecture that I give. I was surprised, therefore, to step into a panel in the midst of a very traditionally formatted presentation, as if written from  an academic panel handbook. It was a dutiful presentation, full of information, to be sure, but the linear, bullet-pointed power point format of Thesis, Development, Conclusion, and proposed Next Steps, seemed anachronistic given the session topic. Where were the hyperlinks? Looking around me, I saw varied responses: some planned their next session, others texted friends, and others took copious notes. Guilty of my own ADD, and wanting to catch a bit of another friend’s presentation, I snuck away and visited the panel on the Aesthetics of Disappearance.