The most difficult thing about preparing for the 2009 AGES Graduate Student Symposium tomorrow was editing my ICFA 2009 essay, “Time Enough for Twitter: Postmodern Science Fiction and Online Personas,” from 2793 words to 1994 words so that I would more closely fall into the 10-15 minute time frame alloted to each presenter (my presentation is in the 12-13 minute range now). The reason for this strict time limit is that we have five presenters and only a one-and-a-half hour time slot for presentations and the Q&A.
Well, it took me a long damn time, but I did cut my paper down while retaining its overall argument. Initially, I focused on eliminating the lengthier examples that I could mention rather than embellish during my presentation. If anyone wants to know more about Saint Augustine, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, and Philip K. Dick, you can ask me during the Q&A. The greater amount of time went into actually rewriting a good portion of the paper to be more concise while eliminating unnecessary repetition.
I hope the paper holds up well tomorrow, and I wish that I had the opportunity to add in the research suggestions that I got from ICFA and the Blogging Brown Bag discussion last week. Unfortunately, it is the end of the semester and I have too many other things to focus on right now (African-American lit research paper, SFRA 2009 program manager duties, Pakistaniaat layouts, and The Postnational Fantasy book project deadline is coming up).
Dynamic Subspace 