This last weekend I had the honor and opportunity to attend and present at the Newberry Library’s Annual Graduate Student Conference. It was wonderful to be surrounded by my peers and to become part of the community of young scholars.
I didn’t get to go to all the panels I wanted to attend (who does?) but the ones I did get to sit in on were fantastic. They were filled with fascinating research and thought-provoking questions. I particularly enjoyed the one on LGBT research in medieval/renaissance literature/musical performances. Listening to the papers made me really think about my own research, and to think about incorporating more theoretical frameworks into my analysis. How each of the presenters managed to do the theory and to have it flow seamlessly into the history was skillful and that is something I hope to work on this semester with an article I’m writing for a research seminar.
I also got wonderful questions about my own research that made me think about how I wrote the paper, how I presented the work and where I am going from there. I also got a great book suggestion that will stretch me out of my temporal comfort zone (but still sticking with my subject, consorts!) that I immediately ordered from Amazon and will devour when it arrives. I really want to look at the foreignness of Henrietta Maria and how that played a part in her reception in England (which I did to some extent, but I think looking at it more would yield more insights) and I’ll incorporate a bit of that into my article, where I am looking at Anna of Denmark’s masquing career as well.
I do a lot of comparative work. I’m OK with that. 🙂