thevillagecharlatan

Do you go to conferences? I’m at a big one right now, the most important annual conference in my field. I have been ducking in and out of conferences like some looky-loo teenage asshole, taking catty notes and thinking about Important Matters. Having Important Conversations. Seeing friends. Laughing and having a good time in the halls with these friends to show what an erudite and socially integrated scholar I am. It’s all starting to wear on me, truth be told, and it was nice to get a break with a session called “Queering Craft”. I entered the conference room during the Q and A, having missed the presentations, and so I just listened to the funny jokes that everyone was telling about queerness. I’m not explicitly a queer theorist but enjoy hearing (and sometimes participating in) those conversations. Since my current project (my pregnancy panel is over so I’m over that research for the time being) involves masculinity, today I imagined that I was doing something queer by studying an overtly masculine, annoying, taciturn, and difficult artist who plays with clay and sews. That’s not how I frame him in my writing but I enjoyed thinking it today just the same. Maybe I should mention this to the Queer Queens running that session. One of them is in this computer room with me right now, possibly blogging about this same Queering Craft panel like me.