The following are two responses from participants describing why they attend national PCA/ACA meetings.

Response from M. Paul Holsinger
Email: mpholsi@mail.ilstu.edu

Once again, Peter Rollins has, I think, hit the proverbial nail on the head regarding attendance at PCA/ACA meetings, whether national or regional—though Peter is concerned in his recent message only with national venues. I have been actively participating in and presenting at PCA meetings nationally and at regional meetings in the South, Midwest, Southwest, and New England for more than 15 years. In that time, I have had the opportunity to present to groups as large as seventy and as small as one—there were more presenters at that latter session that members in the audience.

Now there is no doubt that it is a treat—perhaps an honor—to have 70 fellow scholars show up to hear what one has to say and, in reverse, it is a real “downer” to have one, or two, or even three care enough to come. But it would be foolish to equate size of one's audience with benefits of attending any popular culture-centered conference. One of the best sessions I ever attended was held in a barely converted hotel bedroom in Toronto some years ago with only five persons in attendance, all of them along with the presenters crowded into the tiny space with hardly room to spare. The questions and comments after my presentation were critical but also stimulating.

l learned from that interchange and many of the suggestions gained that day still serve me well more than a decade later. Do we attend PCA/ACA only to be recognized or to have our egos stroked? If so, more's the pity. As Peter suggests there are multiple advantages to coming, most of which cannot be weighted by numbers or even monetary benefits. I think that is especially true about the recent thread on high or low quality of presentations. To be sure, there is something to be said about having only one or two sessions every couple of hours, sessions whose panel members have been run through any number of levels of screening and whose papers had been read repeatedly by a distinguished panel of judges before being allowed to appear in the program. If PCA were to do that, we'd undoubtedly have larger audiences but would we be PCA any longer?

One of the true joys I have experienced through the years of attending conventions has been the opportunity of choosing from an unbelievable eclectic array of themes and sessions. I would not be telling the truth if I didn't say that I wish everyone shared my interest in World War II and that the sessions that I've been able to create since I founded that area eleven years ago would always “play” to packed houses. On the other hand, I would much rather have a handful of interested and engaged listeners at any session that a captive audience “forced” to attend because there was no other program they could find at that hour of the day. I honestly believe most of the participants who have shared with me through the years feel the same. Are some participants not as astute as others? Of course. Should we encourage (insist) on high quality?

Probably. But I do not go to PCA meetings—nearly all the money for which comes out of my own pocket—just to suck up scholarly greatness as rewarding as such might be. I look forward, year after year, to new and innovative approaches to topics—whether new or well-worn. I sometimes leave a session dissatisfied with what I've heard but I would never wish to tell those presenters that they could never come again with anything but pristinely developed theses. Often, it is rough thoughts that are the best. That was what first attracted me to PCA and it brings me back again and again. And for all the crowding, the need for large hotel venues, the multiple sessions at the same time, I would argue that that's what it must always be.

M. Paul Holsinger
Area Chair, World War II, PCA

Response from Any Becker-Chambless

Networking at the PCA/ACA Regional Conferences:  How it Can Change Your Life OR A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Graduate Degree

Hi, everyone!

I'm Amy Becker-Chambless, the Area Chair for the Food and Culture area of the Southwest-Texas PCA/ACA Conference.

This area did not even exist when I came to this conference my first year. It was created when I suggested it and created a call for papers for it the following year. That's when I met the “celebrity academians” in this field. They introduced me to the computer listservs in which the food and culture academians discuss food and culture, and publishing opportunities within the field. I used my contacts to further advertise this area and this conference. Through these contacts and calls for papers, I'm now in touch with two food and culture journals and have gotten an offer to be on the editorial board of one. 

Because of my food and culture conferences, I have been in contact with editors of forthcoming books and I have had the opportunity to submit an article for one of these books. While I hope it will be accepted, and it may not be, I will have a chance to submit it in one of the journals that is a print counterpart to these conferences: The Journal of Popular Culture or The Journal of American Culture. Also, I now have colleagues who have offered to aid my in the real last stage of graduate studies—the job search with anything from a friendly note that there's an opening at their universities, to a letter of recommendation.

Yet these benefits are not the only ones I've derived from being an active participant of the PCA/ACA regional conference. The very participation in such regional and national conferences gives us academians opportunities to create contacts beyond our cloistered lives at our home institutions and find out how our fields are being examined and changed at other universities and colleges. We can discover what other universities are stressing in our fields, and in many cases, how to create an interdisciplinary contact base for ourselves. Through the listservs that I discovered at the regional conference, I've been able to find out about even more opportunities, such as new CFPs for books and journals, as well as conferences. I've even been able to create a database from my own participants that I can use to communicate ideas and more contacts between each other.

Does this all work when we continually try to improve our lot in life, or at least the look of our vitae? Of course. Even without my area chair work, the regional conferences opened up opportunities for me. I presented my first paper at the SW/TX PCA/ACA regional conference in 1998. This presentation became a publication in the form of the Proceedings, and now an extended version has been accepted for publication in an anthology. If I hadn't presented the first time, and spoken up to become an area chair for the next year, very few of these opportunities would have been available to me.

I'm not talking about all of these accomplishments to say Hey, look at me! Look at what I have done! Rather, I'm writing this essay to say that the regional conferences gave me an opportunity to do these things, and that they are an invaluable opportunity for graduate students, professors and professional scholars to establish the contacts that the academic world thrives on.

Thank you for your time, and I hope to meet you at a regional or national PCA/ACA conference soon. 

Amy Becker-Chambless

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