a blog by Peter Leonard
Got back from the Texas/New York trip late Wednesday and have finally edited the photos from Austin:
The proceedings were, as usual, a mix of professional development by day and socializing by night. We were aided by Niklas' familiarity with the city -- his fiancée hails from there. The hotel was a bit nicer than normal, suites at the DoubleTree which allowed various grad students to hang out in each other's rooms and socialize. Of course, by Saturday night most of us were sitting in Ralitsa and Anna's room doing our classwork for the next week.
Having a younger guest speaker (Jonas) definitely contributed to a different feeling this year. We've had fantastic people like Lars-Gunnar Andersson and Bengt af Klintberg in the past, but the fact that we all were closer in age to one of the presenters created a more interesting dynamic. Especially with an author who works on the problems of speech and power, concerns never distant from the first-year language classroom. Ett öga rött is at least in part a meditation on the power dynamic involved in the mastery and mis-performance of standard Swedish, and all the grad students attending had not only their own experiences but that of their students to bring to the table.