Profession

 I've just returned from the American Anthropological Association meeting, my discipline's national conference.  This was my first conference since I graduated and attending as something other than a student was crazy.  It has caused me to think about the meaning of "profess," as in "professional" or "professor."

pro·fess

   [pruh-fes]  Show IPA

verb (used with object)

1.

to lay claim to, often insincerely; pretend to: He professed extreme regret.

2.

to declare openly; announce or affirm; avow or acknowledge: to profess one's satisfaction.

3.

to affirm faith in or allegiance to (a religion, God, etc.).

4.

to declare oneself skilled or expert in; claim to have knowledge of; make (a thing) one's profession  or business.

5.

to teach as a professor: She professes comparative literature.

I often feel my allegiance to anthropology is a sort of vocation.  I remember the first cultural anthropology class I took with Christine Pettit at UNO.  All of a sudden, the patterns I could make out on the edges of things were cast into stark contrast.  What first drew me to anthropology was that there were answers to questions I had about why things were they way they were.  Little did I know it was all illusion.  The more profound truth was that anthropology is all about questions.  It satisfies the two-year-old in me that insists on asking "Why?" all the time.  Over time, I learned to be wary of the easy answers (no, the answer is not always evolution).  But I still loved (love) it.  And now I profess it, usually a la definitions two and four, although sometimes conferences can look a lot like meaning three.

Prior to this round of AAAs, I held conferences in very little regard.  I am pretty good at writing abstracts for papers I haven't written yet.  I remembered being shocked at this practice when a professor told me to submit for a conference based on what I thought I might talk about in a general sort of way.  It is common practice for people to write papers up to the very hour before their presentations.  As a student, I felt like this was cheating.  I have sat through some truly terrible talks where it was obvious that the speaker had not prepared.  But this time around, I realized that the goal of the presentations is not a verbatim transfer of revealed truths, but rather a dialogue around shared interests.

For those unfamiliar with the strange ritual of academic conferences, it begins with the abstract, usually required months before the conference.  (On the economic side of things, you cannot submit an abstract unless you are a member (hello, membership fee) and, in some cases, you have to pay for the conference at the time of submission, not knowing whether or not you'll even go.  As a student, you are expected to pay less, but still a substantial investment for a TA.  This year, as a professional (non-student) member, the cost was a shock.  My friends with affiliations were able to defray the cost through institutional support, but as an "applied anthropologist" (outside of the university system), it was all on me.)  The conference organizers decide whether your paper is accepted or not and let you know a couple of months ahead of time.  Whether or not a paper is accepted has a lot to do with how you market it.  I don't feel like my professors sufficiently stressed how important key words are, or perhaps I just wasn't paying attention.  Based on your 300 word abstract, organizers try to fit you into an appropriate session (a collection of papers usually united by a theme).  At massive conferences, it is also important to decide which section would be best situated to review your abstract.  I have had luck with the feminist anthropologists, the linguists, and the student association.  This time, I asked for the Association of Queer Anthropologists to review my submission and I think that I finally found a good fit.  Upon acceptance, you are given your time and location (super important for practical things, like booking a hotel that doesn't cost $300/night anywhere near the conference).  Then you have to go back to your abstract and figure out how to write the paper.  Given the way that students write research papers, I did not grasp the shifting nature of long-term research.  At the end of the semester, you wrapped up what you were working on and that was the end. Although I finished my fieldwork more than a year ago, my ideas about it are still evolving as I do more writing.  The data is the same, but the interpretations shift in response to new literature or feedback or popular culture.  The abstract I wrote in April for this year's meeting still made sense, although the focus was different than my current obsession with liminality.  At the conference, you are given a program and expected to identify sessions you would like to go to.  In some cases, this information is available online ahead of time, making things more productive.  Ideally, you attend sessions (or individual papers) that you find interesting or pertinent.  In addition to presentations, there are also poster sessions that present research.  At the same time, the exhibit hall is crammed with publishers promoting new or re-released books in hopes of a professor adopting a book for a course.  Editors are sometimes available to discuss publication opportunities.  Months of waiting are boiled into three or four days.

In February, I presented at the Eastern Sociological Society on responses to state intervention in sexual practices on an invited panel (where all of the participants were coordinated ahead of time on a particular topic).  The session was on the subjective experience of researching alternative sexualities.  At the AAAs, my session was on Queer Sexualities, Queer Subjectivities.  It has made all the difference in the world to be on panels that are pertinent to my work.  Previously, I was on panels with people discussing scrap booking and ordering sushi and Mayan pottery.  These papers were actually rather interesting, but not a lot of chance for cross-fertilization when I am talking about sex in Texas and they are talking about weaving traditions.  Disjointed sessions led to a lot of in and out as people dropped by for individual papers.  At this AAA, much of the audience stayed for the entire two hours.  There were papers about the ex-gay movement in Africa, the role of race in the experience of Asian-American gay men, stuff on Haiti, Egypt, Canada, Mexico.  But despite the regional variation, it was possible to trace themes that emerged that weren't even alluded to in the abstracts, such as the notion of generations or genealogy among queer families or the pressures of the re-medicalization of sex.

One of the most exciting things about presenting is the opportunity to talk to people about your work afterwards.  It's one thing for classmates to be interested in your work, because you talk to them all the time and they are usually forced to pay attention to the particular shade of culture that you are obsessed with.  It's very cool when strangers come up to talk about your work.

I spent much of this conference on professional pursuits - networking (also known as catching up with old classmates and professors), attending talks, and making new contacts.  Conferences serve as a snapshot of where the discipline is at any given moment.  It's easy to be caught up in the literature from 5 or 10 years ago, as an artifact of what was being taught while you were in school.  Collecting anthropologists and publishers in one space creates an exchange of current ideas.  It is exciting to know that I am not the only one studying what I study and that I'm not just talking to myself (although that happens often enough).  In the past, as a student, I usually gave my talk and spent the rest of my time on vacation, visiting whichever city with my partner or friends.  Attending a conference as a professional was a different experience.  Maybe I should have been doing this for years, but it is only now that these activities seem like good strategy rather than odious obligation.  The AAAs can be like vacation Bible school - a set-aside period where faith in the enterprise in affirmed and intensified.  I left the conference excited about more anthropology and feeling like an adult.