MLA and other conferences

Morton has an entreatingly entertainingly [unwanted iPad autocorrect to entreatingly] anguished post up about the MLA. (What would “entreatingly anguished” even mean?)

http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-get-that-elusive-academic-job.html

I suppose you could put the APA in place of the MLA, except that I always found the APA incredibly fun. As a continental, the APA never quite feels like your world, and for some reason job interviews never bothered me, perhaps because I had no expectation of succeeding at them. The point being, I could wander the APA in relaxed anonymity, as a sheer observer having a good time.

The event that always horrified me was SPEP, with its rigid hierarchies within an already marginalized subfield. It wasn’t bothersome to be at the fringes at the APA as a fresh PhD because I would never have expected otherwise. But to feel marginalized in one’s interpretation of Heidegger *at SPEP*? Better to be an outcast at the APA than an outcast of the outcasts at SPEP.