In May I went to Toronto for two days, to present my research at a major conference in the new field of motherhood critical and cultural studies, Mothers and History: Histories of Motherhood (hosted by a leading research institute at York University); it was literally a whirlwind visit - flying from Sydney across the Pacific to Toronto, an 18 hour flight with a few hours stopover in Vancouver; the conference was held in the hotel where the delegates stayed, sessions ran from 9am to 8pm, and once there I did not have time to leave the hotel, save going down to the diner at street level for 4am endless coffees to defeat my upside down jetlag. It was during the Australian university semester and back home at the University of New South Wales, I was course coordinator and Writing for Media lecturer on the MA in Journalism and Communication. In order to be able to go to the conference I had to fit my conference trip into my teaching week. Luckily all my three lectures were on one day, Tuesdays, which made it logistically feasible (just). I flew out on Wednesday morning Sydney time arriving Wednesday eve Toronto time; flew back out on Saturday evening from Toronto, arriving back in Sydney on Monday morning; and didn't miss my Tuesday lectures. In fact I also hosted a seminar the Tuesday of my return - with Professor Terry Flew speaking on the classification challenge in the new media age of convergence, at the Journalism and Media Research Centre. I took one of my classes with me to the Seminar where I hosted and introduced Terry Flew's presentation, the room was packed with journalists, academics, journalist-academics and graduate students - one of the biggest seminar audiences this year*. No time to think of jet lag! As I flew straight back into a full load of lecturing, teaching prep and assignment setting and marking, this is a long way of saying that I have had no time until now to reflect back on the conference, and complete a short report that I began the day I returned. I've put up some photos of the flight back (the Cloud series on the blog), but that's all I've managed until today. In the next two or so blog entries I aim to record some of my impressions and experiences at the Mothers and History: Histories of Motherhood Conference, hosted by the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), in Toronto, Canada, May 10-12, 2012.
Ruth Skilbeck
*More on the Terry Flew JMRC Seminar soon.
https://www.facebook.com/events/265359406879548/
http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/conferences.html
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