MLA Membership

[runonsentence]

Good for you, taking initiative. Never hurts to ask. Small liberal arts schools (I went to one, myself!) like to really advertise how engaged, committeed, and over-achiever-ish their students are, so it's possible the department could find you some kind of small fund to pay for something, especially if it seems like it would make it more likely that you go (and therefore give them something to brag about / advertise).

[bdon19]

Runonsentence, I know what you mean about liberal arts schools. They love to brag about us! I'm like 90% sure I'll go whether or not they offer me any money for the conference, anyway. It's only about 5-6 hours away, and since my parents are at around the halfway point, I'm sure they'd be willing to drive me. At this point, my goal is just to find a faculty member who'll go with me! And with my department, I'm fairly certain I may be able to find one! No matter what anyone says about name recognition, I love my LAC more than anything in the world.

[runonsentence]

I've never thought that name-recognition was as important as people make it out to be in the admissions process, anyway. Besides: I've heard of numbers showing that a substantial proportion of graduate students come from LACs. It makes sense, to me: the best of them attract and are dedicated to producing engaged, ambitious, driven students.

[bdon19]

That's good to hear! I mean, I feel so lucky to have gone with my gut instinct and chosen the LAC rather than a prestigious university for undergrad, though many people were disappointed with my decision. I couldn't have been happier with my decision, and I can only hope that I have a grad school experience that comes close to my fabulous undergrad experience.

[ThePoorHangedFool]

Does anyone know of any conferences that are geared toward undergraduate/graduate work on Shakespeare? I should probably clarify that I'm not searching for conferences that are based on performance, theater, film, or any similar aspect of Shakespeare studies. I'm interested in textual explication that, while obviously having the potential to explore a cinematic adaptation, etc., isn't ABOUT Shakespeare in performance. I'm aware of the major conferences that take place each year that are affiliated with the top few associations of Shakespeare scholars.

While someday those would be a dream to attend, let alone at which to present, I'm being realistic at the moment and thus looking for conferences pretty specifically directed at younger academics without the decades of research experience and stacks of published writing the presenters at the more prestigious conferences seem to have in their pockets.