I need a Hall of Justice wipe, don’t I?

We walked into the conference this morning just in time for this session where The Yankee was chairing and I was responding to the papers being presented. The presenters were graduate students, their scholarship quality.

One wrote a piece on the rhetoric of Photovoice, which is a particular photographic methodology. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with the paper until I heard the author present. She’d written her master’s thesis with this method, but had now changed her mind on it. And that made a lot of sense.

Another was a look at the rhetoric of Blaxploitation films. The paper was good, though it isn’t anything I’d ever consider doing myself. But I did find myself quoting some of the movies he mentioned for the rest of the day.

A third paper on the panel was an analysis of some of the political segments on Saturday Night Live.

Somehow I managed to give my response without referencing this segment:

This one did come up:

I love those bits.

Which made the schema-relational-media theory paper look smarter than all of us, really. Always nice to learn new things, and that’s what happened for me in that paper.

We took in a session featuring some of the great political academics of the region, including our old professor Dr. Larry Powell. I love to hear him hold forth. He’ll sit back, cross his arms and tell you how this most recent campaign was like something Goldwater did. And how it was different, too. He’s just a walking education and a very nice man.

I dropped in on an undergrad presentation because one panelist was talking about the rhetoric of World War II posters, an art form I really admire. She talked about this one — essentially women were hard at work, but being “protected” or “held back” by their husbands. Note, too, the form-fitting overalls. On this poster she discussed the rhetoric of mid-century race relations. More gender roles and race rhetoric is found in this poster, she argued.

And then a young woman stood up to deliver her paper on the rhetorical analysis of photojournalism on Katrina coverage. It was more gripping when she discussed how she was an evacuee of that storm.

Later in the afternoon The Yankee delivered her paper on the Kay Hagan-Elizabeth Dole North Carolina senate race. She won top paper honors for this research. (She’s very good.) And then she took a picture of me taking a picture. (She’s so meta.)

We had dinner at Famous Dave’s, a barbecue place from whom we’ve been holding onto a gift card for years. We walked in and Ray Charles started playing on the speakers, so everything was just right. Good food, we just don’t have one around us. Being Friday, which is Pie Day, we had the pecan. (I like everything about pecan pie except for the pecans.)

I drove her past my old apartment, showed off a few things in town — but not my former station because, really, when you’ve seen one building you’ve seen them all.

And then back across the river to our hotel room, where I must prepare for tomorrow’s presentation.