15 December 2016

Looking Forward to My Third AJS Conference



Having attended the Association of Jewish Studies Conference twice before, I am very much looking forward to being able attending a third time. Having first attended in 2008 in Washington, DC and attending the following year in Los Angeles, I am glad that it is returning to Southern California, enabling my attendance.

With it taking place in San Diego, it is easy for me to reach, travel-wise. Of course, I am also grateful to my wife allowing me to go and her taking our kids for those days.
I am curious to see who will be there. One thing I have already noticed is that several of those presenting papers are people whom I know and are my peers, which will be great and did not happen in either of the previous conferences.

I am greatly curious to see how different the tweeting is. When I attended in 2008 and 2009, while I was engaged on Twitter about the conference, it seemed there weren’t many others engaging in it.  However, I am hopeful that there will be more discourse taking place in that space about the conference.

One thing to which I am looking forward is being in a space where there is such great intellectual discourse, curiosity, and scholarship, and being able to soak in it and to be enriched through the experience. I love such cerebral gatherings and events, especially on topics of great interest to me. 

I am also looking forward to re-connecting with people who are engaged in these endeavors and whom I haven’t connected with in-person (as opposed to online (primarily Facebook)). It will be great to be enriched through these conversations and see how my knowledge and experience will be enriched through these interactions.

I am most looking forward to sessions on rabbinics (such as rabbinic literature, Talmud, etc.), but – as in my attending previous AJS conferences – also seeking to go beyond just that field. Obviously, I am also curious in Bible, but we shall see which other panel discussions in other fields I attend.

Finally, for anyone who has read my previous blog posts here on attending AJS conferences (see below for a listing), will see that my writing style has greatly improved over the years since then. Also, I don’t plan on throwing all of my notes on to the screen. Furthermore, I think I took notes using pen and paper, then transcribed them, thus there are some non-sentences going on in some of those posts. Instead, I am aspiring to take notes and do writing on my tablet, which will yield an easier transferring of notes than transcribing. Also, I don’t think I will be throwing all of the panels on the same post.  Hopefully, if I am able to compose them well enough, I will post them separately on Matters of Interest.

In any event, I am greatly looking forward to attending!
 

Listing of previous posts on AJS Conferences: