How important are conferences? And how much would you shell out to present at one?

[GuateAmfeminist]

thanks so much for the sites and suggestions! I will look into those immediately.

[Doctor Cleveland]

True. I'm sure if someone gets more than one abstract accepted, they can choose at that point which session they'd like to present on. Abstract deadlines are coming up soon, March 15ish, so I've got to get going on this!

Actually, you can present twice (but not three times) at the same MLA. And having too many abstracts accepted is not the usual problem.

Conferences aren't something you need to have on your CV to get into PhD. They are something you need on your CV to get a teaching job. So you should plan to start going a few years before you're going on the job market.

Conferences are for making connections (which happens slowly and gradually, conference by conference) and for developing a paper who've written for a class into something more publicly presentable, which is an important middle stage in the process of turning it into a publishable paper.