This week my wife and I are returning to Durham for the annual Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program conference. MURAP is a program that attempts to diversify the professoriate by training minority undergraduates (or undergrads who do scholarship that pertains to/acknowledges the existence of minorities) to, basically, be grad students. I worked as MURAP’s Writing Coordinator for four summers—basically, I coached the students through the actual writing, gave feedback on technical and style stuff, told people they were swell and could handle it—and it was my favorite job ever, pretty much, insofar as my writing hardly makes enough money to constitute a “job.” It’ll be good to hear all this year’s gossip and see some dear old faces. My paper, which I deliver on Friday, has to do with the novelist Helen DeWitt. The conference theme is Race, Ethnicity, and Social Justice in the Internet Age, so it makes total sense that I’m talking about a white lady (?!). (The initial theme was “Social Media, Social Justice,” and I barely fit that rubric. But one plays to one’s strengths.)
I may eventually post the paper here if anybody there likes it.
Should probably put this on my CV or something.
