Nova PhDs

Ahoy,

I figured I would post a response to John's query on the main page for all to easily see--anyway, I am in Memphis, safe and sound. Hopefully I will have a home and job to return to in a few days...

so, if joe can figure out how to get us some categories (i don't see anything myself), this would presumably go under "teaching" and "conferences.

i don't know how many of you know about the NCUR, but it's a pretty big conference that you might encourage some of your best students to submit abstracts to this fall (online abstract submission is oct. 3-dec. 2, 2005). the papers don't have to be complete at that time. if they are accepted, they're invited to present at the conference at the beginning of april (6-8). it's usually mostly juniors and seniors presenting, but the director of the honors college here at Western Carolina tells me that he actually had one freshman from his honors tutorial get a paper accepted this past year.

i mention this for a few reasons.
1) it's apparently a great opportunity for the students to share their work on a variety of topics (they do several phil, english, etc. panels) with each other, to meet other top notch students from around the country, see how they measure up, get a publication on their record (for those who are seriously considering grad school), and so forth.

2) i take it that it would look very nice to our various administrators (particularly for those of us coming up for tenure in a few years), for any of us to have students accepted.

3) this year (2006 i mean), the conference will be held at UNC-Asheville (which started the conference 20 years ago), so if any of you were funded by your schools to accompany your student(s) to the conference, you'd get the chance to spend some time in beautiful western north carolina and visit me in west asheville!

here is the link, if y'all are interested.

i was just reading through the spep program and was struck by a few things. the first (which we already discussed a couple months ago) is just how many villanovans are going to be giving papers, moderating, etc. it's really amazing; it's like we're taking over the organization. next year should be a lot of fun back in philly (party at ammon and heather's? ;)

second thing i noticed is that there seems to be a bit more of what i'd call "classical" phenomenology than at a couple of spep's past — several husserl panels, some M-P, and a couple of sartre panels (including the one with all the big hitters — busch, bernasconi, flynn, martin). i remember one where there was not even a sartre panel.

third thing — there doesn't seem to be quite as much heidegger as in years past. there's still a lot, but it just doesn't seem to me as heidegger-heavy.

finally — i calculated the acceptance rate for the 2004 conference at about 32% (101 accepted/311 submitted) from the business minutes, so good job to y'all who are presenting this year! (i do feel bad now for not submitting anything, but i really just wanted to get the job search behind me this past year. let's start planning some good panels for next year now!)

on to logistical matters: as long as i can get some money from my department, i'm planning to come out just to hit a few panels and catch up with what everyone is working on now, etc. (i will probably fly out thursday morning and back to asheville on sunday — anyone want to split a room? i should know something about money relatively soon, i think.) reply here or drop me an email if you like.