An academic talk I gave about AW

Shweta · Nov 12, 2006

Hey all,

I gave a talk on November 4th at the Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language conference here in San Diego. It was titled "The Evolving Parodies of Barbara Bauer: creating a shared narrative by co-constructing mental spaces"

Which is to say that it was about how we used parody in the chat-room as a way to deal with both real problems and general unhappiness while the forums were down.

The room was full, and some very cool people were there, and the talk was very well-received, so it was pretty great! A couple times, I put a slide up and everyone started laughing.

Anyway, a couple people have asked to see my slides, so I have them in pdf form here for anyone who'd like to see them:

ETA: I've taken the slides down due to recent developments. Sorry.

It's a linguistics talk, and I tend to not put everything on the slides when I talk, so I apologize if it's somewhat incomprehensible in places. :tongue

:

Bartholomew · Nov 12, 2006

Ahhh, memories. ^_^

Alan Yee · Nov 12, 2006

I'm getting all teary-eyed remembering those days. Those were fun.

ChaosTitan · Nov 12, 2006

I didn't understand a lot of those slides, but very cool! I'm glad the talk went well for you.

Unique · Nov 12, 2006

Sweet.

I wasn't there but I heard. A little [Y]ap told me.

Unique · Nov 12, 2006

Shwebb and I are good friends.
I have the dirt on you, Alan.
heh

Shweta · Nov 12, 2006

One of the more amusing moments was talking about it afterwards to Mark Turner, who is a leading light of my field, and incidentally married to Newberry-winning author Megan Whalen Turner. He has a slightly different view of the whole writers-community thing than the rest ^-^

Good Word · Nov 13, 2006

I wonder what Ms. Bauer thinks of this.

JennaGlatzer · Nov 13, 2006

Shweta said:
He has a slightly different view of the whole writers-community thing than the rest ^-^

And you're just going to keep us in suspense about what that view is?

Tell, tell!

I still think it's hilariously awesome that we were the subject of an academic speech.

Birol · Nov 13, 2006

Good job.

Dawno · Nov 13, 2006

Fascinating! And I'm with Jenna - what was Mark Turner's perspective?

Shweta · Nov 13, 2006

JennaGlatzer said:
And you're just going to keep us in suspense about what that view is?

Tell, tell!

Oh um. I wasn't trying to be suspenseful. Just, Mark knows what writers go through, (and actually so does my advisor, because she's close friends with several writers), and nobody else in the room really had a clue. That was all I actually meant.

So when I put up slides about what writing is like and why writers are vunerable to frauds, we had almost all the audience learning somehing new and one of the top people in the field giving me a knowing smirk.

I still think it's hilariously awesome that we were the subject of an academic speech.

It's kind of cheating, of course, to use writers as an example of spontaneous creative coolness. But hey.

Shweta · Nov 13, 2006

Good Word said:
I wonder what Ms. Bauer thinks of this.

If I get a Cease and Desist, I'll let you know.

Alan Yee · Nov 13, 2006

Shweta said:
If I get a Cease and Desist, I'll let you know.

Good luck. She didn't have the heart to send me a Cease and Desist letter. Probably because she soon had hundreds of other people to send them to. I feel so left out.

Shweta · Nov 13, 2006

Birol said:
Good job.

Thank you.

:e2cloud9:

The best part is, it's done! Though, urk, I have to figure out if the conference has proceedings and if I have to write it up. :e2faint:

Higgins · Nov 15, 2006

Quite a story

Shweta said:
Thank you.

The best part is, it's done! Though, urk, I have to figure out if the conference has proceedings and if I have to write it up.

I had no idea that some agent could just shut down a writing website. How is that legally possible? How did you get the site back up?

And think how discursively twisted it is that I had to figure that out from a cognitive linguistics presentation.

ChaosTitan · Nov 15, 2006

Sokal said:
I had no idea that some agent could just shut down a writing website. How is that legally possible? How did you get the site back up?

And think how discursively twisted it is that I had to figure that out from a cognitive linguistics presentation.

Someone with a better memory of events will probably come along, but IIRC, Babs threatened our server with a lawsuit, claiming libel because she was mentioned on the Bewares board and on the 20 Worst Agents list. The server caved, shut down the site.

It took time, and lots of sweat, blood, and tears from Jenna, Charlie, and the other Mods (plus a boatload of other wonderful folks), to get our database back.

All Babs succeeded in doing was getting her name and the 20 Worst Agents list Google-bombed all over the Web. We are all very proud about that.

Shweta · Nov 15, 2006

My memory is that Babs complained about her email address being in a forum post, thus opening her to spammers. The same email address that's on her website.

I really majorly simplified for the talk. I only had 20 minutes.

Zonk · Nov 16, 2006

You know, I have contemplated (seriously!) writing a roman a clef using the Barbarian Captivity as the basis, and then querying BeelzeBarb to represent it.

I just can't find the time.

Maybe we could do it collaboratively, in the spirit of Atlanta Nights.

Anybody game? :tongue

Shweta · Nov 16, 2006

Genius, Zonkmeister.
Sheer genius.

AnneMarble · Nov 17, 2006

Sokal said:
And think how discursively twisted it is that I had to figure that out from a cognitive linguistics presentation.

Kate Thornton · Nov 17, 2006

Zonk said:
You know, I have contemplated (seriously!) writing a roman a clef using the Barbarian Captivity as the basis, and then querying BeelzeBarb to represent it.

I just can't find the time.

Maybe we could do it collaboratively, in the spirit of Atlanta Nights.

Anybody game?

Jeeze, count me in - whatta hoot!

Alan Yee · Nov 17, 2006

Zonk, there's no way we aren't doing this without me. I started one for PA, but I didn't get around to finishing it because of an actual novel I was writing. Count me in!

Gillian · Nov 18, 2006

As ever, I'm late - I had to wait till I got a chance to look at Schweta's slides. They were great, Schweta, and very perceptive - they made me look at us from an entirely different set of angles.

I'd love to hear about feedback and I hope you write it up as a paper. I write a bit about writers from time to time (but from a different academic angle, naturally) and really, really want to see what you have to say

.

Gillian

Shweta · Nov 18, 2006

Oh wow, guess I'll have to actually write that paper...

An academic talk I gave about AW

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