Sorry for the radio silence these last few days–I’ve been on the road, in the air, and on the ground at Michigan State University to give a talk about my current research project and to discuss my book with a class here. (More news–including a podcast!–coming soon.) I’m always happy to visit what we in Colorado call the East: it’s a beautiful spring here, with lovely green grass and flowers bursting open everywhere I look. The accomodations are far from spartan–in fact, they and the hospitality here have been downright stately. And who wouldn’t love to visit a university campus with its own dairy and retail store?
Scented white magnolias!
The former Michigan Agricultural College has a lot in common with Baa Ram U., which was originally called Colorado Agricultural College (“for Eighth Grade graduates!”) Our Deans and Provosts like to call MSU a “peer institution,” but from my perspective in the History department, that’s ridiculous: MSU’s history department has 54 faculty members, 100 graduate students, and a Ph.D. program. They also get pre-tenure leave. We got nothin’ compared to that.
Sorry for the crappy cell phone cam.
They also have the fabulous CIC-AISC (American Indian Studies Consortium), under the direction of Professor Susan Sleeper-Smith, which has generously sponsored my visit here. Next up for the AISC is the Eleventh Annual CIC-American Indian Studies Consortium Graduate Student Conference, which will be held on April 22-24, 2010. The Keynote speaker will be Dr. Benjamin Ramirez-shkwegnaabi. It’s too late to apply to this year’s conference, but those of you who are doing Indian history should put it on your calendars for next year. But, others of you in the Northwest Territory who are interested in Indian history or ethnohistory might want to drop by for day or two, so you can find a detailed conference schedule, deadlines, the call for papers, information about conference awards, travel, registration and lodging, and related conference links, on the AISP website.
See ya tomorrow, friends, after I’ve returned to the ranch, provided that I don’t feel too much like I was rode hard and put away wet. We’ll see!
Historiann 
Yea Susan Sleeper-Smith! I met her at the Berks last time, she’s lovely!
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Just ’cause it’s called East Lansing don’t quite rightly make it “East!” I’m heading a couple hundred miles east from Bituminosia tomorrow and will still not get to salt water, unless a Chesapeake Bay bridge collapses or something. What state name did Thomas Jefferson propose to give to that part of the Lower Peninsula? Will look forward to that podcast. Happy traveling tomorrow!
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Katherine–she really is a very generous and accomodating host, and her students are really smart. (Plus, it’s just nice to find out that someone is reading your book and taking it seriously.)
A good cure for the slumps, I tell ya.
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That’s pretty fucking swank that they serve free lunch at departmental/program seminars!
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No kidding, and guess what? Attendance is a lot better, esp. among the grad students, I’m guessing.
I need to start using food and drink as bribes, and to help lubricate intellectual exchange in my own department. It’s how I grew up in my grad department, but I’ve ended up teaching in departments where that wasn’t the tradition and/or there wasn’t the budget. But, it really works!
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Free food works – as long as it isn’t university catering! I’m *so* tired of platters of cheddar cheese, stale crackers, half-dead fruit, and cookies.
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Isn’t the menu Perpetua describes what we used to have back in Fluff’ya, Historiann? Whatever. I’m extending your late tour into the cedar stands of Delmarva over the next couple of days, and so far I’ve had a lot more free food than I’ve had to do any work. They get to bat tomorrow, though.
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That actually sounds a bit grand for old-school Philly fare, Indy. Would you care for a stainless steel bowl full of last month’s Doritos?
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JJO, you weren’t there (I think) the time they had those little miniaturized hot-dog thingies in some kind of dark viscous, clingy, sauce-based substance! We thought it was all very I guess you’d say existential back in those days.
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