A Dream Come True

As I was looking at my CV (or "curriculum vitae"), I was noticing that I have not given many conference paper presentations. More conference papers means more job search committees might say, "Hey, he writes things and contributes to knowledge, let's give him a job at our school!" However, there are two considerations that have prevented me from generating conference paper proposals. 1. I've been very busy the past few weeks working on things I have to do for the job market, so why should I write a proposal that's only optional? 2. I'm already scheduled to give a conference paper this semester, which means the English department probably wouldn't re-imburse me if I got accepted to another one. However, on Thursday, September 14, I got a short breather, and I thought to myself, "What the heck, I have a day, why not write a paper proposal for the conference that has a September 15th deadline?" Why not indeed? All I needed was to read the panel descriptions and try to think of something that might fit the theme.

But what subject do I know well enough that I won't sound stupid to the panel chair? For instance, if there were a panel on "Henry Fielding," ideally, I'd be able to say something in my proposal that indicated I knew something about the critical field of Fielding. I didn't have the time to survey that field. No, there must be something, some talent or knowledge-acquisitioned thing hidden deep within me, that, when exposed to the world, would blossom forth from the ground ...

From the ground ...

Eureka! Some of you may remember an old post I wrote called, "The Theological Significance of Eating Dirt." In this entry, I revealed the many fascinating things I learned about God and eating dirt in literature. Now, this topic is basically terra incognita (no pun intended), and I do believe I just might know the aesthetics on dirt-eating better than anyone else does. There actually are a lot of interesting things you can say about eating dirt and national identity; I'm not going to say them here, of course, because I do what I can to preserve my pseudoanonymity, and I fear the google search-engine. So, with a heart full of hopes, I sent my fledgling dirt baby proposal into cyberspace, and lo, it returned to me as an approved paper topic!

Now, even though I think I can say some meaningful things about eating dirt, I am not under the delusion that eating dirt is central to the national consciousness or something: I read a book jacket that argued tattoos were actually central to national identity, because America tried to discourage people from getting them. I never found that argument convincing. So, I'm not going to argue that dirt-eating is central to human identity because of the fact that mommas don't let their babies grow up to be dirt-eaters. However, I do think it's an interesting topic. I also suppose there's also a side of me that dreams of the following scenario:

College classroom. Late at night. Professor Murray sighs, reads a C.V., curses the applicant, sighs, reads another C.V., curses the applicant. Suddenly, he sits up straight. The sound of a chuckle mingles with the intake of his breath. A hushed awe. Then, a cry. "Doug! Doug, you gotta look at this! Did you see this guy who gave a paper on eating dirt? I've never heard of anything like this! We have got to interview this guy at MLA to find out what he said! Think of the insights to glean! The personality quirks to admire! The money to offer!" I just might hit paydirt.