Minecraft Castle (Photo credit: Mike_Cooke)

Rhode Island is my staging area for my first trip to the Eastern Communication Association conference. I’m giving a paper tomorrow on Minecraft and the ancient practice of Declamation at around 18:30 GMT in Cambridge, close to Harvard University, but not really hosted there or in any association with them at all. My paper, and hopefully the whole panel, might be recorded in some way, so look for a post. I’m not making a promise here, but I’ll try my best.

At this conference there are a couple of panels I’m interested to see. There are some papers by friends and colleagues that look interesting, but most important to me are panels that begin to address WUDC debating. Nothing so far, although there are a couple of panels where scholars are starting to grapple with non-American formats of debating, and I think it’s interesting to see the initial approaches. I hope to make the audio of these panels available here on this blog for those who are interested in what international formats of debate look like and sound like to American debating scholars at this early entry point. There’s also a historical angle here too, archiving these views so that some future scholar can do a long study across the different approaches.

More updates to come about the conference tomorrow. For now, time to enjoy some Rhode Island local flavor, including (and probably limited to) lobster.