Faye Lynch talks about her experience presenting at the Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference in Philadelphia, supported by the SotA PGR Support Fund.
On 8th March this year I presented my paper ‘Part of the Household, Never at Home: Literary Fembot Companions in the Domestic Space’ at the Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA) 56th Annual Conference in Philadelphia.
Attending the conference has benefited my ongoing research in a number of ways. Through liaising and socialising with the organisers of my panel ‘Univ. Declaration of (Post)Human Rights: (R)evolution of the Clones, Robots & AIs’, (along with my fellow panellists) I was able to begin creating a network of researchers who are similarly concerned with depictions of AI in literature. We are in early discussion (via email) about producing a published collection of articles. In addition to networking with academics within my research area, I also had the enriching opportunity to network with academics in other fields. This exposure to other areas of study has enabled me to place my research in a wider context, and also given me new perspective on my work, opening it up to a more inter-disciplinary approach.
My presenting skills have also been much improved by this experience, and it has imbued me with new confidence for the other conference I will be speaking at this year. It is my intention to develop my conference paper into an article and submit it to NeMLA’s Graduate Student Caucus Essay Award. Receiving this award would result in the article being considered for publishing in the Modern Language Studies journal, further enhancing my profile as a researcher.