By Nat Mengist, HCDE PhD student
November 2023
Nat Mengist with co-presenter Dr. Arielle Saiber
This year's Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) annual meeting was held October 27–29 at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. I've gone to SLSA every year since 2017, and this was my most successful experience so far. The conference theme was “Alien”. I reconnected with friends and mentors from previous years, and met many new faculty and graduate students. For example, I connected with Dr. Rajani Sudan, Professor in the Department of English at Southern Methodist University andco-editor of the flagship journal of SLSA, Configurations, who is also organizing SLSA 2024. In addition to meeting with Dr. Sudan on November 21, I am also discussing plans for next year’s conference with PhD students and postdocs from other universities.
This year I organized a presentation titled, “A Dialogue Regarding Giordano Bruno’s Proposition of Alien Worlds”. The talk was created in collaboration with Dr. Arielle Saiber, Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at Johns Hopkins University. Our presentation continued a writing project that began in my Winter 2022 RAship with Daniela and culminated in my Preliminary Exam. The session was attended by about 10 people, and led to a vigorous discussion. Arielle and I have continued our conversation and will publish an extended version of the talk in Configurations, incorporating a media studies approach that I have recently decided to incorporate into the reading list for my General Exams.
Thank you for this funding award!
— nat
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