Conferencing

There's a bit of an intellectual feast to be had in the city this weekend. Besides last night's lecture, I've also been attending a history conference yesterday and today - which is very nice as I hardly ever get to go to conferences anymore. This one is the annual meeting of the North East Conference on British Studies (NECBS), the regional affiliate of the main North American scholarly society for British studies. The theme of this year's meeting was designed to tie in with this being the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union between Scotland and England - but as is usual at these meetings, some of the papers had only the most tenuous of connections to this theme.

Not that it really mattered, of course. It was just a nice excuse to hear some interesting papers, and catch up with people. I saw a few former classmates I've not seen in years, as well as my old MA supervisor (who gave a very good paper on the wartime landscape photography of Bill Brandt). My favourite paper, however, was one on calypso music, of all things - specifically on the generation of calypso musicians who emigrated from the West Indies to England in the postwar period. One of them, a guy who called himself Lord Kitchener (ha!), wrote incredibly socially- and racially-aware lyrics - quite amazing to hear.