AAR 2009: Taking stock

This AAR was very good for me overall. Friday night, Dan Barber and I got to meet Bruce Rosenstock, after attending the great session he was a part of; we all went out that night and also got to hang out a bit at my session the next morning. My paper was well-received and the session itself generated some great conversation, including a conversation with Catherine Keller, whom I was meeting for the first time.

The Zizek-Altizer session was good, but somewhat disappointing, in that the system of having hand-selected responses from the audience (which sounded great to me going in) didn’t work quite as envisioned, in part due to Zizek’s long-windedness. Receptions were interesting, as I met more new people than I usually do, including James Cone, whose hand I shook but who almost certainly had already forgotten I existed even before the handshake was finished — but my main goal was to be able to tell my students in liberation theology that I had met him, so: mission accomplished on that front.

Beyond that, I had very productive conversations with publishers, ate some good meals, heard some good papers, and bought some interesting books. There was a nice restaurant in the conference center that appeared to be organized around the Unibroue beers, so I enjoyed that, and I also had pho for the first time in Chinatown, where I got to talk to an actual non-academic Montreal resident with whom I shared a table. Sadly, that was about as much exploration of Montreal that I did unguided by AAR-related concerns; my biggest regret on this front is that I didn’t get to take advantage of the possibility of buying French books.

Feel free to share your own experiences, or links to posts thereupon, in comments.